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“Constance opened the door, stepping back to let the 

bride precede her” 


A PILGRIM MAID 


■kA Story of Plymouth Qolony in 1620 

BY 

■ MARION AMES TAGGART 

n 

AUTHOR OF 

“CAPTAIN SYLVIA,” “THE DAUGHTERS OF THE 
LITTLE GREY HOUSE,” “THE LITTLE GREY 
HOUSE,” “HOLLYHOCK HOUSE,” ETC. 



ILLUSTRATED 

BY 

THE DONALDSONS 


/ 


DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK LONDON 

1920 














PREFACE 


This story is like those we hear of our neighbours 
to-day: it is a mixture of fact and fancy. 

The aim in telling it has been to present Plymouth 
Colony as it was in its first three years of existence; 
to keep to possibilities, even while inventing inci- 
dents. 

Actual events have been transferred from a later 
to an earlier year when they could be made useful, 
to bring them within the story’s compass, and to 
develop it. 

For instance, John Billington was lost for five days 
and died early, but not as early as in the story. 
Stephen Hopkins was fined for allowing his servants 
to play shovelboard, but this did not happen till 
some time later than 1622. Stephen Hopkins was 
twice married; records show that there was dissen- 
sion; that the second wife tried to get an inheritance 
for her own children, to the injury of the son and 
daughter of the first wife. Facts of this sort are 
used, enlarged upon, construed to cause, or altered 
to suit, certain results. 

But there is fidelity to the general trend of events, 
above all to the spirit of Plymouth in its beginnings. 

vii 


PREFACE 


viii 

As far as may be, the people who have been trans- 
ferred into the story act in accordance with what is 
known of the actual bearers of these names. 

There was a Maid of Plymouth, Constance Hop- 
kins, who came in the Mayflower , with her father 
Stephen; her stepmother, Eliza; her brother, Giles, 
and her little half-sister and brother, Damaris and 
Oceanus, and to whom the Anne, in 1623, brought 
her husband, Honourable Nicholas Snowe, after- 
ward one of the founders of Eastham, Massachu- 
setts. 

Undoubtedly the real Constance Hopkins was 
sweeter than the story can make her, as a living 
girl must be sweeter than one created of paper and 
ink. Yet it is hoped that this Plymouth Maid, 
Constance, of the story, may also find friends. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 


I. 

With England’s Shores Left Far 
Astern 

3 

II. 

To Buffet Waves and Ride on 
Storms 

i 5 

III. 

Weary Waiting at the Gates . 

3 i 

IV. 

The First Yuletide 

45 

V. 

The New Year in the New Land . 

61 

VI. 

Stout Hearts and Sad Ones . 

76 

VII. 

The Persuasive Power of Justice 
and Violence 

90 

VIII. 

Deep Love, Deep Wound . 

104 

IX. 

Seedtime of the First Spring . 

119 

X. 

Treaties 

133 

XI. 

A Home Begun and a Home Undone 

150 

XII. 

The Lost Lads 

166 

XIII. 

Sundry Herbs and Simples 

183 


IX 


X 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

XIV. Light-Minded Man, Heavy- 

Hearted Master 199 

XV. The “Fortune” That Sailed, First 

West, then East 216 

XVI. A Gallant Lad Withal .... 234 

XVII. The Well-Conned Lesson. . . 251 

XVIII. Christmas Wins, Though Out- 
lawed 267 

XIX. A Fault Confessed, Thereby Re- 
dressed 284 

XX. The Third Summer’s Garnered 

Yield 302 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

“ Constance opened the door, stepping back 

to let the bride precede her ” . .Frontispiece 

(See page 157) 

FACING PAGE 

“ ‘ Constantia; confess, confess and do not 

try to shield thy wicked brother ’ ” . . 52 

“ ‘ Look there/ said John Alden ” . . . . 116 

“ ‘ You look splendid, my Knight of the Wilder- 
ness 9 ” 244 


XI 











A PILGRIM MAID 
A Story of Plymouth Colony in 1620 























A PILGRIM MAID 


CHAPTER I 

With England’s Shores Left Far Astern 
YOUNG girl, brown-haired, blue-eyed, with a 



1 JL sweet seriousness that was neither joy nor 
sorrow upon her fair pale face, leaned against the 
mast on the Mayflower s deck watching the bustle of 
the final preparations for setting sail westward. 

A boy somewhat older than she stood beside her 
whittling an arrow from a bit of beechwood, whistling 
through his teeth, his tongue pressed against them, 
a livelier air than a pilgrim boy from Leyden was 
supposed to know, and sullenly scorning to betray 
interest in the excitement ashore and aboard. 

A little girl clung to the pretty young girl’s skirt; 
the unlikeness between them, though they were 
sisters, was explained by their being but half sisters. 
Little Damaris was like her mother, Constance’s 
stepmother, while Constance herself reflected the 
delicate loveliness of her own and her brother Giles’s 
mother, dead in early youth and lying now at rest in 


4 


A PILGRIM MAID 


a green English churchyard while her children were 
setting forth into the unknown. 

Two boys — one older than Constance, Giles’s age, 
the other younger than the girl — came rushing down 
the deck with such impetuosity, plus the younger 
lad’s head used as a battering ram, that the men at 
work stowing away hampers and barrels, trying to 
clear a way for the start, gave place to the rough 
onslaught. 

Several looked after the pair in a way that sug- 
gested something more vigorous than a look had it 
not been that fear of the pilgrim leaders restrained 
swearing. Not a whit did the charging lads care for 
the wrath they aroused. The elder stopped himself 
by clutching the rope which Constance Hopkins idly 
swung, while the younger caught Giles around the 
waist and nearly pulled him over. 

“I’ll teach you manners, you young savage, 
Francis Billington!” growled Giles, but he did not 
mean it, as Francis well knew. 

“If I’m a savage I’ll be the only one of us at home 
in America,” chuckled the boy. 

“Getting ready an arrow for the savage?” he 
added. 

“It’s all decided. There’s been the greatest to-do 
ashore. Why didn’t you come off the ship to see the 
last of ’em, Constance?” interrupted the older boy. 
Constance Hopkins shook her head, sadly. 


A PILGRIM MAID 


5 


“Nay, then, John, IVe had my fill of partings,” 
she said. “Are they gone back, those we had to 
leave behind?” 

“That have they!” cried John Billington. “Some 
of them were sorry to miss the adventure, but if 
truth were told some were glad to be well out of it, 
and with no more disgrace in setting back than that 
the Mayflower could not hold us all. Well, they’ve 
missed danger and maybe death, but I’d not be out 
of it for a king’s ransom. Giles, what do you think 
is whispered? That the Speedwell could make the 
voyage as well as the Mayflower , though she be 
smaller, if only she carried less sail, and that her 
leaking is — a greater leak in her master Reynolds’s 
truth, and that she’d be seaworthy if he’d let her!” 

“Cur!” growled Giles Hopkins. “He knows he’d 
have to stay with his ship in the wilderness a year 
it might be and there’s better comfort in England and 
Holland ! We’re well rid of him if he’s that kind of a 
coward. I wondered myself if he was up to a trick 
when we put in the first time, at Dartmouth. This 
time when we made Plymouth I smelled a rat certain. 
Are we almost loaded?” 

“Yes. They’ve packed all the provisions from the 
Speedwell into the Mayflower that she will hold. 
We’ll be off* soon. Not too soon! The sixth day of 
September, and we a month dallying along the shore 
because of the Speedwell s leaking! Constantia, 


6 


A PILGRIM MAID 


you’ll be cold before we make a fire in the New 
World Pm thinking !” 

John Billington chuckled as if the cold of winter 
in the wilderness were a merry jest. 

“Cold, and maybe hungry, and maybe ill of body 
and sick of heart, but never quite losing courage, I 
hope, John, comrade!” Constance said, looking up 
with a smile and a flush that warmed her white cheeks 
from which heavy thoughts had driven their usual 
soft colour. 

“No fear! You’re the kind that says little and 
does much,” said John Billington with surprising 
sharpness in a lad that never seemed to have a 
thought to spare for anything but madcap pranks. 

“Here come Father, and the captain, and dear 
John,” said little Damaris. 

Stephen Hopkins was a strong-built man, with a 
fire in his eye, and an air of the world about him, in 
spite of his severe Puritan garb, that declared him 
different from most of his comrades of the Leyden 
community of English exiles. 

With all her likeness to her dead English girl- 
mother, who was gentle born and well bred, there 
was something in Constance as she stood now, 
head up and eyes bright, that was also like her 
father. 

Beside Mr. Hopkins walked a thick-set man, a 
soldier in every motion and look, with little of the 


A PILGRIM MAID 


7 

Puritan in his air, and just behind them came a young 
man, far younger than either of the others, with an 
open, pleasant English face, and an expression at 
once shy and friendly. 

“Oh, dear John Alden!” cried little Damaris, and 
forsook Constance’s skirt for John Alden’s ready 
arms which raised her to his shoulder. 

Giles Hopkins’s gloom lifted as he returned Captain 
Myles Standish’s salute. 

“Yes, Captain; I’m ready enough to sail,” he said, 
answering the captain’s question. 

“Mistress Constantia?” suggested Myles Stand- 
ish. 

“Is there doubt of it when we’ve twice put in from 
sea, and were ready to sail when we left Southampton 
a month ago?” asked Constance. “Sure we are 
ready, Captain Standish, as you well know. Where 
is Mistress Rose?” 

“In the women’s cabin with Mistress Hopkins 
putting to rights their belongings as fast as they can 
before we weigh anchor, and get perhaps stood on 
our heads by winds and waves,” Captain Standish 
smiled. “Though the wind is fine for us now.” His 
face clouded. “Mistress Rose is a frail rose, Con! 
They will be coming on deck to see the start.” 

“The voyage may give sweet Rose new strength, 
Captain Standish,” murmured Constance coming 
close to the captain and slipping her hand into his, 


8 


A PILGRIM MAID 


for she was his prime favourite and his lovely, frail 
young wife’s chosen friend, in spite of the ten years 
difference in their ages. 

“Ah, Con, my lass, God grant it, but I’m sore 
afraid for her! How can she buffet the exposure of a 
wilderness winter, and — hush ! Here they are ! ” whis- 
pered Myles Standish. 

Mistress Eliza Hopkins was tall, bony, sinewy of 
build, with a dark, strong face, determination and 
temper in her eye. Rose Standish was her opposite — 
a slight, pale, drooping creature not more than five 
years above twenty; patience, suffering in her every 
motion, and clinging affection in every line of her 
gentle face. 

Constance ran to wind her arm around her as Rose 
came up and slipped one little hand into her hus- 
band’s arm. 

Mrs. Hopkins frowned. 

“It likes me not to see you so forward with cares- 
ses, Constantia,” she said, and her voice rasped like 
the ship’s tackles as the sailors got up the can- 
vas. 

“It is not becoming in the elect whose hearts are 
set upon heavenly things to fawn upon creatures, nor 
make unmaidenly displays.” 

Giles kicked viciously at the rope which Con- 
stance had held. It was not hard to guess that the 
unnatural gloom, the sullenness that marked a boy 


A PILGRIM MAID 


9 

meant by Nature to be pleasant, was due to bad blood 
between him and this aggressive stepmother, who 
plainly did not like him. 

“Oh, Mistress Hopkins,” cried Constance, flushing, 
“why do you think it is wrong to be loving? Never 
can I believe God who made us with warm hearts, 
and gave us such darlings as Rose Standish, didn’t 
want us to love and show our love.” 

“You are much too free with your irreverence, 
Mistress Constantia; it becomes you not to pro- 
claim your Maker’s opinions and desires for his 
saints,” said Mrs. Hopkins, frowning heavily. 

“’ Sdeath, Eliza, will you never let the girl alone?” 
cried Stephen Hopkins, angrily. 

“As though we had nothing to think of in weighing 
anchor and leaving England for ever — and for what 
else besides, who knows — without carping at a little 
girl’s loving natural ways to an older girl whom she 
loves? I agree with Connie; it’s good to sweeten 
life with affection.” 

“Connie, forsooth!” echoed Mrs. Hopkins, bitterly. 
“Are we to use meaningless titles for young women 
setting forth to found a kingdom? And do you still 
use the oaths of worldlings, as you did just now? 
Oh, Stephen Hopkins, may you not be found un- 
worthy of your high calling and invoke the wrath of 
Heaven upon your family!” 

Stephen Hopkins looked ready to burst out into 


10 A PILGRIM MAID 

hot wrath, but Myles Standish gave him a humorous 
glance, and shrugged his shoulders. 

“What would you?” he seemed to say. “Old 
friend, bad temper seizes every opportunity to wreak 
itself, and we who have seen the world can afford to 
let the women fume. Jealousy is a worse vice than 
an oath of the Stuart reign.” 

Stephen Hopkins harkened to this unspoken 
philosophy; Myles Standish had great influence over 
him. This, with the rapid gathering on deck of the 
rest of the pilgrims, served to avert what threatened 
to be an explosion of pardonable wrath. They came 
crowding up from the cabins, this courageous band of 
determined men and women, and gathered silently 
to look their last on home, and not merely on home, 
but on the comforts of the established life which to 
many among them were necessary to their existence. 

There were many children, sober little men and 
women, in unchildlike caricatures of their elders’ 
garb and with solemn round faces looking scared by 
the gravity around them. 

Priscilla Mullins gathered the children together and 
led them over to join Constance Hopkins. She and 
Constance divided the love of the child pilgrims 
between them. Priscilla, round of face, smooth and 
rosy of cheek, wholesome and sensible, was good 
to look upon. It often happened that her duty 
brought her near to wherever John Alden might 


A PILGRIM MAID 


n 


chance to be, but no one had ever suspected that 
John objected. 

John Alden had been taken on as cooper from 
Southampton when the Mayflower first sailed. It 
was not certain that the pilgrims could keep him with 
them. Already they had learned to value him, and 
many a glance was now exchanged that told the hope 
that sunny little Priscilla might help to hold the 
young man on this hard expedition. 

The crew of the Mayflower pulled up her sails, but 
without the usual sailor songs. Silently they pulled, 
working in unison to the sharp words of command 
uttered by their officers, till every shred of canvas, 
under which they were to set forth under a favouring 
wind, was strained into place and set. 

On the shore was gathered a crowd gazing, wonder- 
ing, at this departure. Some there were who were to 
have been of the company in the lesser ship, the 
Speedwell , which had been remanded from the voyage 
as unfit for it. These lingered to see the setting forth 
for the New World which was not to be their world, 
after all. 

There were many who gazed, pityingly, awe-struck, 
but bewildered by the spirit that led these severe- 
looking people away from England first, and then 
from Holland, to try their fortunes where no fortune 
promised. 

Others there were who laughed merrily over the 


12 


A PILGRIM MAID 


absurdity of the quest, and these called all sorts of 
jests and quips to the pilgrims on the ship, inviting 
to a contest of wit which the pilgrims utterly dis- 
dained. 

And then the by-standers on wharf and sands of 
old Plymouth became silent, for, as the Mayflower be- 
gan to move out from her dock, there arose the 
solemn chant of a psalm. 

The air was wailing, lugubrious, unmusical, but the 
words were awesome. 

“When Israel went out from Egypt, from the land 
of a strange people,” they were singing. 

“A strange people !” And these pilgrims were of 
English blood, and this was England which they 
were thus renouncing! 

What curious folk these were! 

But this psalm was followed by another: “The 
Lord is my shepherd. ” 

Ah, that was another matter! No one who heard 
them, however slight the sympathy felt for this un- 
sympathetic band, but hoped that the Lord would 
shepherd them, “lead them beside still waters,” for 
the sea might well be unquiet. 

“Oh, poor creatures, poor creatures,” said a buxom 
woman, snuggling her baby’s head into her deep 
shoulder, and wiping her own eyes with her apron. 
“I fain must pity ’em, that I must, though I’m none 
too lovin’ myself toward their queer dourness. But 


A PILGRIM MAID 


13 

I hope the Lord will shepherd ’em; sore will they need 
it, I’m thinkin’, yonder where there’s no shepherds 
nor flocks, but only wild men to cut them down like we 
do haw for the church, as they all thinks is wicked!” 
she mourned, motherly yearning toward the people 
going out the harbour like babes in the wood, into 
no one would dare say what awful fate. 

The pilgrims stood with their faces set toward 
England, with England tugging at their heart strings, 
as the strong southeasterly wind filled the May- 
flower s canvas and pulled at her shrouds. 

And as they sailed away the monotonous chant of 
the psalms went on, floating back to England, a 
farewell and a prophecy. 

Rose Standish’s tears were softly falling and her 
voice was silent, but Constance Hopkins chanted 
bravely, and the children joined her with Priscilla 
Mullins’s strong contralto upholding them. 

Even Giles sang, and the two scamps of Billington 
boys looked serious for once, and helped the chant. 

Myles Standish raised his soldier’s hat and turned 
to Stephen Hopkins, holding out his right hand. 

‘‘We’re fairly off this time, friend Stephen,” he 
said. “God speed us.” 

“Amen, Captain Myles, for else we’ll speed not, 
returned Stephen Hopkins. 

“Oh, Daddy, we’re together anyway!” cried Con- 
stance, with one of her sudden bursts of emotion 


14 


A PILGRIM MAID 


which her stepmother so severely condemned, and 
she threw herself on her father’s breast. 

Mr. Hopkins did not share his wife’s view of his 
beloved little girl’s demonstrativeness. He patted 
her head gently, tucking a stray wisp of hair under 
her Puritan cap. 

“There, there, my child, there, there, Connie! 
Surely we’re together and shall be. So it can’t be a 
wilderness for us, can it?” he said. 

An hour later, the wind still favouring, the May- 
flower dropped sunsetward, out of old Plymouth 
Harbour. 


CHAPTER II 

To Buffet Waves and Ride on Storms 

T HE wind held fair, the golden September 
weather waited on each new day at its rising 
and sent it at its close, radiantly splendid, into the 
sea ahead of the Mayflower as she swept westward. 

Full canvas hoisted she was able to sail at her best 
speed under the favouring conditions so that the 
hopeful young people whom she carried talked 
confidently of the houses they would build, the vil- 
lage they would found before heavy frosts. Captain 
Myles Standish, always impetuous as any of the boys, 
was one of those who let themselves forget there 
were such things as storms. 

“We’ll be New Englishmen at this rate before we 
fully realize we’ve left home; what do you say, my 
lassies three?” he demanded, pausing in a rapid 
stride of the deck before Constance Hopkins and two 
young girls who were her own age, but seemed much 
younger, Humility Cooper and her cousin, Elizabeth 
Tilley. 

“What do you three mermaidens in this forward 
nook each morning?” Captain Standish went on 


i6 


A PILGRIM MAID 


without waiting for a reply to his first question, which 
indeed, he had not asked to have it answered. 

“Elizabeth’s mother, Mistress John Tilley, is sick 
and declares that she shall die,” said Constance, 
Humility and Elizabeth being shyly silent before the 
captain. 

“No one ever thought to live through sea-sickness, 
nor wanted to,” declared Captain Myles with his 
hearty laugh. “Yet no one dies of it, that is certain. 
And is Mistress Ann Tilley also lain down and left 
Humility to the mercy of the dolphins? And is your 
stepmother, too, Con, a victim? It’s a calm sea 
we’ve been having by comparison. I’ve sailed from 
England into France when there zvas a sea running, 
certes! But this — pooh!” 

“Humility’s cousin, Mistress Ann Tilley, is not ill, 
nor my stepmother, Captain Standish, but they are 
attending to those who are, and to the children. 
Father says that when he sailed for Virginia, before 
my mother died, meaning to settle there, that the 
storm that wrecked them on Bermuda Island and 
kept us from being already these eleven years colon- 
ists in the New World, was a wind and sea that make 
this seem noTnore than the lake at the king’s palace, 
where the swans float.” 

Constance looked up smiling at the captain as she 
answered, but he noted that her eyes were swollen 
from tears. 


A PILGRIM MAID 


i7 

“Take a turn with me along the deck, child,” 
Captain Myles said, gruffly, and held out a hand to 
steady Constance on her feet. 

“Now, what was it ? ” he asked, lightly touching the 
young girl's cheek when they had passed beyond the 
hearing of Constance's two demure little companions. 
“Homesick, my lass?'' 

“Heartsick, rather, Captain Myles,'' said Con- 
stance, with a sob. “Mistress Hopkins hates me!” 

“Oh, fie, Connie, how could she?” asked the cap- 
tain, lightly, but he scowled angrily. There was 
much sympathy between him and Stephen Hopkins, 
neither of whom agreed with the extreme severity of 
most of the pilgrims; they both had seen the world 
and looked at life from their wider experience. 

Captain Standish knew that Giles’s and Constance's 
mother had been the daughter of an old and honour- 
able family, with all the fine qualities of mind and 
soul that should be the inheritance of gentle breeding. 
He knew how it had come about that Stephen Hop- 
kins had married a second time a woman greatly her 
inferior, whose jealousy of the first wife's children 
saddened their young lives and made his own course 
hard and unpleasant. Prone to speak his mind and 
fond of Giles and Constance, the impetuous captain 
often found it hard to keep his tongue between his 
teeth when Dame Eliza indulged in her favourite 
game of badgering, persecuting her stepchildren. 


18 A PILGRIM MAID 

Now, when he said: “Fie, how could she?” Con- 
stance looked up at him with a forlorn smile. She 
knew the captain was quite aware that her step- 
mother could, and did dislike her, and she caught 
the anger in his voice. 

“How could she not, dear Captain Myles?” she 
asked. Then, with her pent-up feeling overmaster- 
ing her, she burst out sobbing. 

“Oh, you know she hates, she hates me, Captain!” 
she cried. “Nothing I can do is pleasing to her. I 
take care of Damaris — sure I love my little sister, and 
do not remember the half that is not my sister in her! 
And I wait on Mistress Hopkins, and sew, and do her 
bidding, and I do not answer her cruel taunts, nor do 
I go to my father complaining; but she hates me. Is 
it fair? Could I help it that my father loved my own 
mother, and married her, and that she was a lovely 
and accomplished lady?” 

“Do you want to help it, if by helping you mean 
altering, Connie?” asked Captain Myles, with a 
twinkle. “No, child, you surely cannot help all 
these things which come by no will of yours, but by 
the will of God. And I am your witness that you 
are ever patient and dutiful. Bear as best you can, 
sweet Constantia, and by and by the wrong will be- 
come right, as right in the end is ever strongest. I 
cannot endure to see your young eyes wet with tears 
called out by unkindness. There is enough and to 


A PILGRIM MAID 19 

spare of hard matters to endure for all of us on this 
adventure not to add to it what is not only un- 
necessary, but unjust. Cheer up, Con, my lass! 
It s a long lane — in England! — that has no turning, 
and it’s a long voyage on the seas that ends in no 
safe harbour! And do you know, Connie girl, that 
there’s soon to be a turn in this bright weather? 
There’s a feeling of change and threatening in this 
soft wind.” 

Constance wiped her eyes and smiled, knowing 
that the captain wished to lead her into other 
themes than her own troubles, the discussion of which 
was, after all, useless. 

“I don’t know about the weather, except the 
weather I’m having,” she said. “Ah, I don’t want 
it to storm, not on the mid-seas, Captain Myles.” 

“Aye, but it’s the mid-seas of the year, Connie, 
when the days and nights are one in length, and at 
that time old wise men say a storm is usually forth- 
coming. We’ll weather it, never fear! If we are 
bearing westward a great hope and mission as we all 
believe — not I in precisely the same fashion as these 
stricter saints, but in my own way no less — then we 
are sure to reach our goal, my dear,” said the captain 
cheerfully. 

“Sometimes I lose faith; I think I am wicked,” 
sighed Constance. 

“We are all poor miserable sinners! Even the 


20 


A PILGRIM MAID 


English Church which we have cast off and consigned 
to perdition, puts that confession into our mouths,” 
said Captain Myles, with another twinkle, and was 
gratified that Constance’s laugh rang out in response 
to his thinly veiled mischief. 

Captain Standish proved to be a true prophet. On 
the second day after he had announced to Constance 
the coming change in weather it came. The May - 
flower ran into a violent storm, seas and wind were 
wild, the small ship tossed on the crest of billows 
and plunged down into the chasm between them as 
they reared high above her till it seemed impossible 
that she should hold together, far less hold her course. 

In truth she did not hold to her course, but fell off 
it before the storm, groaning in every beam as if with 
fearful grief at her own danger, and at the likelihood 
of destroying by her destruction the hope, the 
tremendous mission which she bore within her. 

The women and children cowered below in their 
crowded quarters — lacking air, space, every comfort 
— numb with the misery of sickness and the threat of 
imminent death. 

Constance Hopkins, young as she was, cheered and 
sustained her elders. Like a mettlesome horse that 
throws up his head and puts forth renewed strength 
when there rises before him a long steep mountain, 
Constance laughed at fear, sang and jested, tenderly 
helping the sick, gathering around her the children 


21 


A PILGRIM MAID 

for story-telling and such quiet play as there was 
room for. Little Damaris was sick and cross, but 
Constance comforted her with unfailing patience, 
proving so motherly an elder sister than even Mis- 
tress Eliza’s jealous dislike for the girl melted when 
she saw her so loving to the child. 

“You are proving yourself a good girl, Constantia,” 
she said, with something like shame. “If I die you 
will look after Damaris and bring her up as I would 
have done? Promise me this, for I know that you 
will never break your word, and having it I can 
leave my child without anxiety for her future.” 

“It needs no promise, Stepmother,” said Con- 
stance. “Surely I would not fail to do my best for 
my little sister. But if you want my word fully, 
it is given you. I will try to be grown up and wise, 
and bring up Damaris carefully if you should leave 
her. But isn’t this silly talk! You will not die. 
You will tell Damaris’s little girls about your voyage 
in the May flower y and laugh with them over how you 
talked of dying when we were so tossed and tumbled, 
like a tennis ball struck by a strong hand holding 
a big racquet, but unskilled at the game!” Con- 
stance laughed but her stepmother frowned. 

“Never shall I talk of games to my daughter,” she 
said, “nor shall you, if you take my place.” Then 
she relented, recalling Constance’s unselfish kindness 
all these dark hours. 


22 


A PILGRIM MAID 


“ But you have been a good girl, Constantia. 
Though I fear you are not chastised in spirit as 
becomes one of our company of saints, yet have 
you been patient and gentle in all ways, and a 
mother to Damaris and the other small ones. I 
can do no less than say this and remember it,” she 
added. 

Constance was white from weariness and the fear 
that she fought down with merry chatter, but now a 
warm flush spread to her hair. 

“Oh, Mistress Hopkins, if you would not hate me, 
if you would but think me just a little worthy of 
kindly thoughts — for indeed I am not wicked — the 
hardship of this voyage would be a cheap price to pay 
for it! I would not be so unhappy as I am if, though 
you did not love me, you would at least not hate me, 
nor mind that my father loved me — me and Giles!” 
Constance cried passionately, trembling on the verge 
of tears. 

Then she dashed her hand across her eyes as Giles 
might have done, and laughed to choke down a sob. 

“Priscilla! Priscilla Mullins, come! I need your 
help,” she called. 

“What to do, Constance?” asked Priscilla, edging 
her way from the other end of the crowded cabin to 
the younger girl. 

Priscilla looked blooming still, in spite of the 
conditions to dim her bright colour. 


A PILGRIM MAID 23 

Placid by nature, she did not fret over discomfort 
or danger. Trim and neat, she was a pleasant sight 
among the distressed, pallid faces about her, like a bit 
of English sky, a green English meadow, a warm 
English hearth in the waste of waters that led to 
the waste of wintry wilderness. 

“What am I do to for thee, Constance ?” Priscilla 
asked in her deep, alto voice. 

“Help me get these children up into the air in a 
sheltered nook on deck,” said Constance. “They 
are suffocating here.” 

“No, no!” cried two or three mothers. “They 
will be washed away, Constantia.” 

“Not where we have been taking them these three 
days past,” said Priscilla. “Let me go first and get 
John Alden to prepare that nest of sails and ropes he 
made so cleverly for us two days ago.” 

“What doesn’t John Alden do cleverly?” mur- 
mured Constance, with a sly glance. “Go then, 
Pris dear, but don’t forget to hasten back to tell me 
it is ready.” 

Priscilla did not linger. John Alden had gotten 
two others to help him, and a safe shelter where the 
children could be packed to breathe the air they 
sorely needed was ready when Priscilla came to ask 
for it. So Priscilla hurried back and soon she and 
Constance had the little pilgrims safely stowed, 
made comfortable, though Damaris feared the great 


A PILGRIM MAID 


24 

waves towering on every side and clung to Constance 
in desperate faith. 

“What is to do yonder ?” asked Priscilla of John 
Alden, who after they were settled came to see that 
everything was right with them. 

“What are the men working upon?” 

“I suppose it’s no harm telling you now,” said 
John Alden, “since they are at work as you see, but 
the ship has been leaking badly, and one of her main 
beams bowed and cracked, directly amidships. 
There has been the next thing to mutiny among the 
sailors, who have no desire to go to the bottom, and 
wanted to turn back. We have been in consultation 
and they have growled and threatened, but we are 
half way over to the western world so may as safely 
go on as to return. At last we got them to agree to 
that and now they are mending the ship. We have 
aboard a great jack; one of the passengers brought it 
out of Holland, luckily. What they are doing yonder 
is jacking up that broken beam. The carpenter is 
going to set a post under it in the lower deck, and 
calk the leaky upper parts, and so we shall go on to 
America. The ship is staunch enough, we all agree, 
if only we can hold her where she is strained. But 
you had no idea of how near you were to going back, 
had you?” 

“Oh, no!” cried Priscilla. “Almost am I tempted 
to wish we had returned.” 


A PILGRIM MAID 


25 

“No, no, no!” cried Constance. “No turning 
back! Storms, and savages, and wilderness ahead, 
but no turning back!” 

Damaris fell asleep on Constance’s shoulder, and 
slept so deeply that when Myles Standish, Stephen 
Hopkins, and John Alden came to help the girls to 
get the children safely down again into their cabin she 
did not waken, and Constance begged to be allowed to 
stay there with her, letting her sleep in the strong air, 
for the child had troubled her sister by her languor. 

Cramped and aching Constance kept her place, 
Damaris’s dead weight upon her arm, till, after a long 
time, her father returned to her with a moved face. 

“Shift the child to my arm, Constance,” he said, 
sitting beside her. “You must be weary with your 
long vigil over her, my patient, sweet Constance!” 

“Oh, Father-daddy,” cried Constance, quick tears 
springing to her eyes, “what does it matter if you 
call me that? You will always love me, my father?” 

“Child, child, what aileth thee?” said Stephen 
Hopkins, gently. “Are you not the very core of my 
heart, so like your lovely young mother that you 
grip me at times with the pain of my joy in you and 
my sorrow for her. The pilgrim brethren would not 
approve of such expressions of love, my dear, yet I 
think God who gave me a father’s heart and you a 
daughter’s, and taught us our duty to Him by the 
figure of His own Fatherhood, cannot share that 


26 


A PILGRIM MAID 


condemnation. All the world to me you shall be to 
the end of my life, my Constance. But I came to tell 
you a great piece of news. The Mayflower has 
shipped another passenger, mid-seas though it is.” 

Constance looked up questioningly. 

“I have another son, Constance. The angels 
given charge of little children saw him safely to us 
through the perils of the voyage. Do you not think, 
as I do, that this child is like a promise to us of 
success in the New World?” 

“Yes, Father,” said Constance, softly, sweet grav- 
ity upon her face, and tears upon her lashes. “Will 
he be called Stephen?” 

“Your stepmother wishes him named Oceanus, 
because of his sea-birth. Do you like the name?” 
asked her father. 

Constance shook her head. “Not a whit,” she 
said, “for it sounds like a heathen god, and that I 
do not like, though my stepmother is a stricter 
Puritan than are you and I. I would love another 
Stephen Hopkins. But if it must be Oceanus — well, 
Til try to make it a smooth ocean for the little fellow, 
his life with us, I mean.” 

“Shall we go below to see him? I will carry 
Damaris,” said Mr. Hopkins, rising, and offering 
Constance his hand, at the same time shifting her 
burden to himself. 

Damaris whined and burrowed into her father’s 


A PILGRIM MAID 


27 

shoulder, half waking. Constance stumbled and fell 
laughing, to her knees, numb from long sitting with 
the child’s weight upon them. 

At the door of the cabin they met Doctor Fuller, 
who paused to look long and steadily at Constance. 

“You have been saving me work, little mistress,” 
he said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Your 
blithe courage has done more than my physic to hold 
off serious trouble in yonder cabin, and your service 
of hands has been as helpful. When we get to our 
new home will you accept the position of physician’s 
assistant? Will you be my cheerful little partner, 
and let us be Samuel Fuller and Company, physicians 
and surgeons to the worshipful company of pilgrims 
in the New World?” 

Constance dropped a curtsey as well as the 
narrow space allowed. She, as well as all the rest of 
the ship’s company, loved and trusted this kind 
young doctor who had left his wife and child to follow 
him later, and was crossing the seas with the pilgrims 
as the minister to their suffering bodies. 

“Indeed, Doctor Fuller, I will accept the office, 
though it will make me so proud that I shall be turned 
out of the community as unfit to be part of it,” she 
cried. 

There followed after this long days of bleak en- 
durance, the cold increasing, the storms raging. For 


28 


A PILGRIM MAID 


days at a time the Mayflower lay to, stripped of all 
sail, floating in currents, thrown up on high, driven 
nose down into an apparently bottomless pit, the 
least of man’s work cut off from man’s natural life, 
left to herself in the desert of waters, packed with the 
humanity that crowded her. 

Yet through it all the men and women she bore did 
not lose heart, but beneath the overwhelming misery 
of their condition kept alive the sense of God’s sus- 
taining providence and personal direction. 

Thus it was not strange that the little ship and her 
company proved stronger than the wintry storms, 
that she survived and, once more hoisting sail, kept 
on her westerly course. 

It was November; for two months and more the 
Mayflower had sailed and drifted, but now there were 
signs that the hazardous voyage was nearly over. 

“Come on deck, Con! Come on deck!” shouted 
Giles Hopkins. “All hands on deck for the first 
glimpse of land! They think ’twill soon be seen.” 

Pale, weak, but quivering with joy, the pilgrims 
gathered on the Mayflower s decks. 

Rose Standish was but the shadow of her sweet 
self. Constance lingered to give the final touches 
to Rose’s toilette; they were all striving to make 
some little festal appearance to their garments 
suitably to greet the New World. 

“I can hardly go up, dear Connie,” murmured 


\ 


A PILGRIM MAID 29 

Rose. “ The Mayflower hath taken all the vigour 
from this poor rose.” 

“When the mayflower goes, the rose blooms,” 
said Constance. “Wait till we get ashore and you 
are in your own warm, cozy home!” 

Rose shook her head, but made an effort to greet 
Captain Myles brightly as he came to help her to the 
deck. 

“What land are we to see, Myles ? Where are we ? ” 
she asked. 

“Gosnold’s country of Cape Cod, rose of the 
world,” said Captain Myles. “It lies just ahead. 
Have a care, Constance; don’t trip. Here we are, 
then!” 

They took their places in a sheltered nook and 
waited. The Billington boys had clambered high 
aloft and no one reproved them. Though their 
pranks were always calling forth a reprimand from 
some one, this time no one blamed them, but rather 
envied them for getting where they could see land 
first of all. 

Sharply Francis Billington’s boyish voice rang out: 

“Land! Land! Land!” he shouted. 

It was but an instant before the entire company 
of pilgrims were on their knees, sobbing, chanting, 
praising, each in his own way, the God who had 
brought their pilgrimage to this end. 

That night they tacked southward, looking for 


A PILGRIM MAID 


3 ° 

Hudson’s river, but the sea was so rough, the shoals 
around the promontories southward so dangerous, 
that they gave over the quest and turned back. 

The next day the sun shone with the brilliant glory 
of winter upon the sea, and upon the low-lying coast, 
as the Mayflower came into her harbour. 

“Father, it is the New World!” cried Constance, 
clasping her father’s arm in spite of the tiny May- 
flower baby which she held. 

“The New World it is, friend Stephen. Now to 
conquer it!” said Myles Standish, clapping Mr. Hop- 
kins on the shoulder and touching his sword hilt with 
the other hand. 


CHAPTER III 


Weary Waiting at the Gates 

C ALL Giles hither. I need help to strap these 
blankets to carry safely, Mr. Hopkins/’ said 
Dame Eliza Hopkins, bustling up to her husband two 
hours after the Mayflower had made anchorage. 

“To carry whither, wife?” asked Mr. Hopkins, 
with the amused smile that always irritated his 
excitable wife by its detached calmness. 

“Will you not need the blankets at night? Truth 
to tell this Cape Cod air seems to me well fit for 
blankets.” 

“And for what other use should they be carried 
ashore? Or would they keep us warm left on the 
ship?” demanded Mistress Eliza. “Truly, Stephen 
Hopkins, you are a test of the patience of a saint!’ 

“Which needs no testing, since the patience of the 
saints has passed into a proverb,” commented 
Stephen Hopkins. “But with all humility I would 
answer ‘yes’ to your question, Eliza: the blankets 
would surely keep you warmer when on the ship than 
if they were ashore, since it is on the ship that you 
are to remain.” 


31 


32 


A PILGRIM MAID 


“Remain! On the ship? For how long, pray? 
And why ? Do you not think that I have had enough 
and to spare of this ship after more than two months 
within her straitened cabin, and Oceanus crying, poor 
child, and wearing upon me as if he felt the hardship 
of his birthplace? Nor is Mistress White’s baby, 
Peregrine, happier than my child in being born on 
this Mayflower. When one is not crying, the other 
is and oftener than not in concert. Why should I 
not go ashore with the others?” demanded Mistress 
Eliza, in quick anger. 

“Ah, wife, wife, my poor Eliza,” sighed Mr. Hop- 
kins, raising his hand to stem the torrent. “Leave 
not all the patience of the saints to those in paradise! 
You, with all the other women, will remain on the 
ship while certain of the men — the rest being left to 
guard you — go in the shallop to explore our new 
country and pick the fittest place for our settlement. 
How long we may be gone, I do not know. Rest 
assured it will not be an absence wilfully prolonged. 
You will be more comfortable here than ashore. It 
is likely that when you do go ashore to begin the new 
home you will look back regretfully at the straitened 
quarters of the little ship that has served us well, in 
spite of sundry weaknesses which she developed. 
Be that as it may, this delay is necessary, as re- 
flection will show you, so let us not weary ourselves 
with useless discussion of it.” 


A PILGRIM MAID 


33 

Mistress Hopkins knew that when her husband 
spoke in this manner, discussion of his decision was 
indeed useless. She had an awe of his wisdom, his 
amused toleration of her, of his superior birth and 
education, and, though she ventured to goad him in 
small affairs, when it came to greater ones she dared 
not dispute him. So now she bit her lip, as angry and 
disappointed tears sprang to her eyes, but did not 
reply. 

Stephen Hopkins produced from his inner pocket 
an oblong packet sewn in an oilskin wrapper. 

“Here, Eliza,” he said, “are papers of value to this 
expedition, together with some important only to 
ourselves, but to us sufficiently so to guard them 
carefully. The public papers were entrusted to me 
just before we sailed from Southampton by one in- 
terested in the welfare of this settlement. My own 
papers relate to the English inheritance that will be 
my children’s should they care to claim it. These 
papers I must leave in your care now that I am to go 
on this exploring party ashore. I will not risk carry- 
ing them where savages might attack us, though I 
have kept them upon me throughout the voyage. 
Guard them well. Not for worlds would I lose the 
papers relating to the community, sorry as I should 
be to lose my own, for those were a trust, and per- 
sonal loss would be nothing compared to the loss of 
them.” 


34 


A PILGRIM MAID 


He handed the packet to his wife as he spoke and 
she took it, turning it curiously over and about. 

“I hope the English inheritance will one day come 
to Damaris and Oceanus,” she said, bitterly, her 
jealousy of the two children of her husband’s first 
wife plain to be seen. “ Here’s Giles,” she added, 
hastily thrusting the packet into her bosom with a 
violence that her husband noted and wondered at. 

“ Father,” said Giles, coming up, “take me with 
you.” 

Gloom and discontent were upon his brow. Giles’s 
face was fast growing into a settled expression of 
bitterness. His stepmother’s dislike for him, and for 
his sister, Giles bore less well than Constance. The 
natural sweetness of the girl, her sunny hopefulness, 
led her ceaselessly to try to make things pleasant 
around her, to be always ready to forget and begin 
again, hoping that at last she might win her step- 
mother’s kindness. But Giles never forgot, con- 
sequently never could hope that the bad situation 
would mend, and he returned Mistress Eliza’s dis- 
like with compound interest. He was a brave lad, 
capable of strong attachments, but the bitterness 
that he harboured, the unhappiness of his home life, 
were doing him irreparable harm. His father was 
keenly alive to this fact, and one of his motives in 
coming to the New World with the Puritans, with 
whose strict views he by no means fully sympathized, 


A PILGRIM MAID 


35 

was to give Giles the opportunity to conquer the 
wilderness, and in conquering it to find a vent for his 
energy, happiness for himself. 

Mr. Hopkins turned to the boy now and sighed, 
seeing that he had heard his stepmother’s expression 
of hope that her children would receive their father’s 
English patrimony. But he said only: 

“Take you with me where, Giles?” 

“Exploring the country. I am too old, too strong 
to stay here with the women and children. Besides, 
I want to go,” said Giles, shortly. 

“But few of the men are to go, my son; you will 
not be reckoned among the weaklings in staying,” 
said Mr. Hopkins, laying his hand upon the boy’s 
shoulder with a smile that Giles did not return. 
“Enough have volunteered; Captain Standish has 
made up his company. You are best here and will 
find enough to do. Have you thought that you are 
my eldest, and that if we met with savages, or other 
fatal onslaught, that you must take my place? I 
cannot afford to risk both of us at once. You are 
my reliance and successor, Giles lad.” 

The boy’s sullen face broke into a piteous smile; 
he flushed and looked into his father’s eyes with a 
glance that revealed for an instant the dominant 
passion of his life, his adoring love for his father. 

Then he dropped his lids, veiling the light that he 
himself was conscious shone in them. 


A PILGRIM MAID 


36 

“Very well, If you want me to stay, stay it is. 
But I’d like to go. And if there is danger, why not 
let me take your place? I should not know as much 
as you, but I would obey the captain’s orders, and I 
am as strong as you are. Better let me go if there’s 
any chance of not returning,” he said. 

“Your valuable young life for mine, my boy? 
Hardly that!” said Stephen Hopkins with a com- 
radely arm thrown across the boy. “I shall always 
be a piece of drift from the old shore; you will grow 
from your youth into the New World’s life. And 
what would my remanent of life be to me if my eldest 
born had purchased it?” 

“You are young enough, Father,” began Giles, 
struggling not to show that the expression of his 
father’s love moved him as it did. 

Mistress Eliza, who had been watching and listen- 
ing to what was said with scornful impatience, broke 
in. 

“Let the lad go. He will not be helpful here, and 
your little children need your protection, not to 
speak of your wife, Mr. Hopkins.” 

At the first syllable Giles had hastened away. 
Stephen Hopkins turned on her. “The boy is more 
precious than I am. It is settled; he is to stay. 
Take great care of the packet I have entrusted to 
you,” he said. 

For four days the ship’s carpenters had busied 


A PILGRIM MAID 


37 


themselves in putting together and making ready 
the shallop which the Mayflower had carried for the 
pilgrims to use in sailing the shallow waters of the 
bays and rivers of the new land, to discover the spot 
upon which they should decide to make their begin- 
ning. 

The small craft was ready now, and in the morning 
set out, taking a small band of the men who had 
crossed on the Mayflower , as much ammunition and 
provisions as her capacity allowed them, to proceed no 
one knew whither, to encounter no one knew what. 

Constancy stood wistfully, anxiously, watching 
the prim white sail disappear. 

Humility Cooper and Elizabeth Tilley — the cous- 
ins, who, though Constance’s age, seemed so much 
younger — and Priscilla Mullins — who though older, 
seemed but Constance’s age — were close beside her, 
and, seated on a roll of woollen cloth, sat Rose Stand- 
ish, drooping as now she always drooped, often cough- 
ing, watching with her unnaturally clear eyes, as the 
girls watched, the departure of the little craft that 
bore their beloved protectors away. 

The country that lay before them looked “wild and 
weather-beaten.” All that they could see was woods 
and more woods, stretching westward to meet the 
bleak November sky, hiding who could say what 
dangers of wild beasts and yet more-savage men? 

Behind them lay the heaving ocean, dark under* 


A PILGRIM MAID 


38 

the scudding clouds, and which they had just sailed 
for two months of torture of body and mind. 

If the little shallop were but sailing toward one 
single friend, if there were but one friendly English- 
built house beside whose hearth the adventurers 
might warm themselves after a handclasp of welcome ! 
Desolation and still more desolation behind and be- 
fore them! What awful secrets did that low-lying, 
mysterious coast conceal? What could the future 
hold for this handful of pilgrims who were to grapple 
without human aid with the cruelties of a severe 
clime, of preying creatures, both beast and human? 

Rose Standish’s head bent low as the tipmost 
point of the shallop's mast rounded a promontory, 
till it rested on her knees and her thin shoulders 
heaved. Instantly Constance was on her knees 
before her, gently forcing Rose’s hands from her face 
and drawing her head upon her shoulder. 

“There, there!” Constance crooned as if to a 
baby. “There, there, sweet Rose! What is it, what 
is it?” 

“Oh, if I knew he would ever come back! Oh, if 
I knew how to go on, how, how to go on!” Rose 
sobbed. 

“Captain Myles come back ! ’’cried Constance, with 
a laugh that she was delighted to hear sounded 
genuine. 

“Why, silly little Rose Standish, don’t you know 


A PILGRIM MAID 


39 

nothing could keep the captain from coming back? 
Wouldn’t it be a sorry day for an Indian, or for any 
beast, when he attacked our right arm of the colony? 
No fear of him not coming back to us! And how to 
go on, is that it ? In your own cozy little house, with 
Prissy and the rest of us to help you look after it till 
you are strong again, and then the fair spring sun- 
shine, and the salt winds straight from home blowing 
upon you, and you will not need to know how to go 
on! It will be the rest of us who will have to learn 
how to keep up with you!” 

“Kind Constance,” whispered Rose, stroking the 
girl’s cheek and looking wistfully into her eyes as she 
dried her own. “You keep me up, though you are so 
young! Not for nothing were you named Constantia, 
for constant indeed you are! I will be good, and not 
trouble you. Usually I feel sure that I shall get well, 

but to-day — seeing Myles go . Sometimes it 

comes over me with terrible certainty that it is not for 
me to see this wilderness bloom.” 

“Just tiredness, dear one,” said Constance, lov- 
ingly, and as if she were a whole college of learned 
physicians. “Have no fear.” 

Mistress Hopkins came in search of them, carrying 
the baby Oceanus with manifest protest against hi? 
weight and wailing. 

“I have been looking for you, Constantia,” she 
said, as if this were a severe accusation against the 


40 


A PILGRIM MAID 


girl. “You are to take this child. Have I not 
enough to do and to put up with that I must be worn 
threadbare by his crying? And what a country! 
Your father has been tormenting me with his 
mending and preparation for this expedition so that 
I have not seen it as it is until just now. Look at it, 
only look at it! What a place to bring a decent 
•woman to who has never wanted! Though I may 
not have been the fine lady that his first wife was, yet 
am I a comfortable farmer’s daughter, and Stephen 
Hopkins should not have brought me to a coast more 
bleak and dismal than the barrens of Sahara. Woods, 
nothing but woods! And full of lions, and tigers, and 
who knows what other raving, raging wild vermin — 
who knows? What does thy father mean by bring- 
ing me to this?” 

Constance pressed her lips together hard, a burning 
crimson flooding her face as she took the baby 
violently thrust upon her and straightened his dis- 
ordered wrappings, reminding herself that his mother 
was not his fault. 

“Why as to that, Mistress Hopkins,” said Priscilla 
Mullins in her downright, sensible way, “Mr. Hop- 
kins did not bring you. We all came willingly, and 
I make no doubt that all of us knew quite well that 
it was a wilderness to which we were bound.” 

“There is knowing and knowing, Priscilla Mullins, 
and the knowing before seeing is a different thing 


A PILGRIM MAID 


4i 


from the knowing and seeing. Stephen Hopkins had 
been about the world; he even set sail for Virginia, 
which as I understand is somewhere not far from 
Cape Cod, though not near enough to give us neigh- 
bours for the borrowing of a salt rising, or the trade of 
a recipe, or the loan of a croup simple should my 
blessed babe turn suffocating as he is like to do in 
this wicked cold wind ; and these things are the com- 
forts of a woman’s life, and her right — as all good 
women will tell thee before thou art old enough to 
know what the lack is in this desolation. So it is 
clear that Stephen Hopkins had no right to bring 
me here, innocent as I was of what it all stood for, 
and hard enough as it is to be married to a man whose 
first wife was of the gentry, and whose children that 
she left for my torment are like to her, headstrong and 
proud-stomached, and hating me, however I slave 
for them. And your father, Constantia Hopkins, 
has gone now, not content with bringing me here 
across that waste o’ waters, and never is it likely will 
come back to me to look after that innocent babe that 
was born on the ocean and bears its name according, 
and came like the dove to the ark, bearing an olive 
branch across the deluge. But much your father 
cares for this, but has gone and left me, and it is no 
man’s part to leave a weak woman to struggle alone 
to keep wild beasts and Indians from devouring her 
children; and so I tell you, and so I maintain. And 


4 2 


A PILGRIM MAID 


never, never have I looked upon a scene so forsaken 
and unbearable as that gray woodland that the man 
who swore to cherish me has led me into.” 

Constance quite well knew that this hysterical un- 
reason in her stepmother would pass, and that it was 
not more worth heeding than the wind that whistled 
around the ship’s stripped masts. Mistress Eliza had 
a vixenish temper, and a jealous one. She frequently 
lashed herself into a fury with one or another of the 
family for its object and felt the better for it, not re- 
garding how it left the victim feeling. 

But though she knew this, Constance could not 
always act upon her knowledge, and disregard her. 
She was but a very young girl and now she was a very 
weary one, with every nerve quivering from tense 
anxiety in watching her father go into unknown 
danger. 

She sprang to her feet with a cry. 

“Oh, my father, my father! How dare you blame 
him, my patient, wise, forbearing father! Why did 
he bring you here, indeed! He — so fine, so noble, so 
hard-pressed with your tongue, Mistress Hopkins! — 
I will not hear you blame him. Oh, my father, my 
dear, dear, good father!” she sobbed, losing all sense 
of restraint in her grief. 

Suddenly on hearing this outburst, Mistress Hop- 
kins, as is sometimes the way of such as she, became 
as self-controlled as she had, but a moment before, 


A PILGRIM MAID 


43 

been beside herself. And in becoming quiet she be- 
came much more angry than she had been, and more 
vindictive. 

“You speak to me like this? — you dare to!” she 
said in a low, furious voice. “You will learn to 
your sorrow what it means to flout me. You will 
pay for this, Constantia Hopkins, and pay to the 
last penny, to your everlasting shame and misery.” 

Constance was too frightened by this change, by 
this white fury, which she had never seen before in 
her stepmother, to answer; but before she could have 
answered, Doctor Fuller, who had strayed that way 
in time to hear the last of Dame Eliza’s tirade, Con- 
stance’s retort, and this final threat, took Constance 
by the arm and led her away. 

“Quiet, my dear, quiet and calm, you know! 
Don’t let yourself forget what is due to your father’s 
wife, to yourself, still more to your conscience,” 
he warned her. “And remember that a soft answer 
turneth away wrath.” 

“Oh, it doesn’t, Doctor Fuller, indeed it doesn’t!” 
sobbed Constance, utterly unstrung. “I’ve tried it, 
tried it again and again, and it only makes the wrath 
turn the harder upon me; it never turns it away! 
Indeed, indeed I’ve faithfully tried it.” 

“It’s a hard pilgrimage for you at times I fear, 
Constance, but never turn aside into wrong on your 
part,” said the good doctor, gently. 


44 


A PILGRIM MAID 


“Oh, I’m sorry I flared up, I am sorry I spoke 
angrily. But my father! To blame him when he is 
so patient, and has so much to endure! Must I beg 
his wife’s pardon?” said Constance, humbly. 

Doctor Fuller concealed a smile. Sorry as he was 
for Constance, and indignant at her stepmother’s 
unkindness, it amused him to note how completely 
in her thoughts Constance separated herself from the 
least connection with her. 

“I think it would be the better course, my dear, 
and I admire you for being the one to suggest it,” he 
answered, with an encouraging pat on Constance’s 
sleeve. 

“Well, I will. I mean to do what is right, and I 
will,” Constance sighed. “But I truly think it will 
do no good,” she added. 

“Nor I,” Doctor Fuller agreed with her in his 
thoughts, but he took good care not to let this 
opinion reach his lips. 


CHAPTER IV 


The First Yuletide 



ONSTANCE had a tender conscience, quick 


to self-blame. She was unhappy if she could 
impute to herself a fault, ill at ease till she had done 
all that she could to repair wrong. Although her 
stepmother’s dislike for her, still more her open ex- 
pression of it, was cruelly unjust and prevented all 
possibility of love for her, still Constance deeply 
regretted having spoken to her with lack of respect. 

But when she made humble apology for the fault 
and begged Mrs. Hopkins’s pardon with sweet sin- 
cerity, she was received in a manner that turned 
contrition into bitterness. 

Dame Eliza looked at her with a cold light in her 
steely blue eyes, and a scornful smile. Plainly she 
was too petty herself to understand generosity in 
others, and construed Constance’s apology into a 
confession of fear of her. 

“Poor work spreading bad butter over a burnt 
crust,” shecommented. “There’s no love lost between 
us, Constantia Hopkins; maybe none ever found, nor 
ever will be. I don’t want your fair words, nor need 


45 


A PILGRIM MAID 


4 6 

you hope your father will not one day see you, and 
that sullen brother of yours, as do I. So waste no 
breath trying to get around me. Damaris is fretting; 
look after her.” 

Poor Constance! She had been so honestly sorry 
for having been angry and having given vent to 
it, had gone to her stepmother with such sincerity, 
hoping against hope, for the unnumbered time, that 
she could make their relation pleasanter! It was not 
possible to help feeling a violent reaction from this 
reception, to keep her scorned sweetness from turn- 
ing to bitterness in her heart. 

She told the story to Giles, and it made him furi- 
ously angry. 

“You young ninny to humble yourself to her,” he 
cried, with flashing eyes. “Will you never learn to 
expect nothing but injustice from her? It isn’t 
what we do, or say; it is jealousy. She will not let 
our father love us, she hates the children of our 
mother, and hates our mother’s memory, that she 
was in every way Mistress Eliza’s superior, as she 
guesses, knowing that she was better born, better 
bred, and surely better in character. I remember 
our mother, Con, if not clearly. I’m sorry you have 
not even so much recollection of her. You are 
like her, and may be thankful for it. I could trounce 
you for crawling to Mistress Hopkins! Learn your 
lesson for all time, and no more apologies! Con, I 


A PILGRIM MAID 47 

shall not stand it! No matter how it goes with this 
colony, I shall go back to England. I will not stay 
to be put upon, to see my father turned from me.” 

“Oh, Giles, that could never be!” cried Constance. 
“Father will never turn from us.” 

“I did not say from us; I said from me” retorted 
Giles. “You are different, a girl, and — and like 
Mother, and — several other reasons. But I often see 
that Father is not sure whether he shall approve me 
or not. It will not be so long till I am twenty-one, 
then I shall get out of reach of these things.” 

Constance’s troubled face brightened. To her 
natural hopefulness Giles’s twenty-first birthday was 
far enough away to allow a great deal of good to 
come before it. 

“Oh, twenty-one, Giles! You’ll be prospering and 
happy here before that,” she cried. 

“But I must tell no more of troubles with my step- 
mother to Giles,” she added mentally. “It will 
never do to pile fuel on his smouldering fires!” 

The next day when Constance was helping Mis- 
tress Hopkins with her mending, she noticed the 
oilskin-wrapped packet that her father had left with 
his wife for safe keeping, tossed carelessly upon the 
hammock which swung from the side of the berth 
which she and her stepmother shared, the bed de- 
vised by ingenuity for little Damaris. 

“ Is not that packet in Damaris’s hammock Father’s 


A PILGRIM MAID 


48 

packet of valuable papers ? ” Constance asked. “ Is 
there not a risk in letting them lie about, so highly as 
he prizes them?” 

She made the suggestion timidly, for Dame Eliza 
did not take kindly to hints of this nature. To her 
surprise her stepmother received her remark not 
merely pleasantly, but almost eagerly, quick with 
self-reproach. 

“Indeed thou art right, Constantia, and I am 
wrong to leave it for an instant outside the strong 
chest, where I shall put it under lock and key,” she 
said, nevertheless not moving to rescue it. “I 
have carried it tied around my neck by a silken 
cord and hidden in my bosom till this hour past. I 
dropped it there when I was trying to mend Damaris’s 
hammock. Thanks to you for reminding me of it. 
What can ail that hammock defies me! I have 
tried in all ways to strengthen it, but it sags. Some 
night the child will take a bad fall from it. Try you 
what you can make of it, Constantia.” 

“I am not skilful, Stepmother,” smiled Constance. 
“Giles is just outside studying the chart of our voy- 
age hither. Let me call him to repair the hammock. 
We would not have you fall at night and crack the 
pretty golden pate, would we, Damaris?” The 
child shook her “golden pate” hard. 

“That you would not, Connie, for you are good, 
good to me!” she cried. 


A PILGRIM MAID 


49 

Mistress Hopkins looked on the little girl with 
somewhat of softening of her stern lips, yet she felt 
called upon to reprimand this lightness of speech. 

“Not ‘Connie/ Damaris, as thou hast been often 
enough told. We do not hold with the ungodly 
manner of nicknames. Thy sister is Constantia, 
and so must thou call her. And you must not put 
into the child’s head notions of its being pretty, Con- 
stantia. Beauty is a snare of the devil, and vanity 
is his weapon to ensnare the soul. Do not let me 
hear you again speak to a child of mine of her pretty 
golden pate. As to the hammock if you choose to 
call your brother to repair it for his half-sister I 
have nothing against the plan.” 

Constance jumped up and ran out of the cabin. 

“Giles, Giles, will you come to try what you can 
do with Damaris’s sleeping hammock?” she called. 

“What’s wrong with it?” demanded Giles, rising 
reluctantly, but following Constance, nevertheless. 

“I don’t know, but Mistress Hopkins says she 
cannot repair it and that the child is like to fall with 
its breaking some night,” said Constance, entering 
again the small, close cabin of the women. “Here is 
Giles, Mistress Hopkins; he will try what he can do,” 
she added. 

Giles examined the hammock in silence, bade 
Constance bring him cord, and at last let it swing 
back into place, and straightened himself. He had 


A PILGRIM MAID 


50 

been bent over the canvas with it drawn forward 
against his breast. 

“I see nothing the matter with the hammock ex- 
cept a looseness of its cords, and perhaps weakness of 
one where I put in the new one. You could have 
mended it, Con/’ he said, ungraciously, and sensitive 
Constance flushed at the implication that her step- 
mother had not required his help, for she never could 
endure anything like a disagreeable atmosphere 
around her. 

“ Giles says ‘Con/” observed Damaris, justifying 
herself for the use of nicknames. 

“ Giles does many things that we do not approve; 
let us hope he will not lead his young sister and 
brother into evil ways,” returned her mother, sourly. 
“But thou shouldst thank him when he does thee a 
service, not to be deficient on thy side in virtue.” 

“You know Giles doesn’t need thanks for what he 
does for small people, don’t you, Hop-o-my-Thumb ?” 
Giles said and departed, successful in both his aims, 
in pleasing the child by his name for her, and dis- 
pleasing her mother. 

Two hours later Constance was sitting rolled up in 
heavy woollens like a cocoon well forward of the main 
mast, in a sheltered nook, reading to Rose Standish, 
who was also wrapped to her chin, and who when she 
was in the open, seemed to find relief from the op- 
pression that made breathing so hard a matter to her. 


A PILGRIM MAID 51 

Mistress Hopkins came toward them in furious 
haste, her mouth open as if she were panting, one 
hand pressed against her breast. 

“Constantia, confess, confess, and do not try to 
shield thy wicked brother !” she cried. 

“ Confess! My wicked brother? Do you mean 
the baby, for you cannot mean Giles ?” Constance 
said, springing to her feet. 

“That lamb of seven weeks! Indeed, you im- 
pudent girl, I mean so such thing, as well you know, 
but that dreadful, sin-enslaved, criminal, Gile ” 

“Hush!” cried Constance, “I will not hear you!” 

There was a fire in her eyes that made even Mis- 
tress Eliza halt in her speech. 

“Giles Hopkins has stolen your father’s packet, 
the packet of papers which you saw in the hammock 
and reminded me to put away,” she said, more quietly. 
“I shall leave him to be dealt with by your father 
who must soon return. But you, you! Can you 
clear yourself? Did you help him steal it ? Nay, did 
you call him in for this purpose, warning him that he 
should find the packet there, and to take it? Is this 
a plan between you? For ever have I said that there 
was that in you two that curdled my blood with fear 
for you of what you should become. Not like your 
godly father are you two. From elsewhere have you 
drawn the blood that poisons you. Confess and I 
will ask your father to spare you.” 


A PILGRIM MAID. 


52 

Constance stood with her thick wrappings falling 
from her as she threw up her hands in dumb appeal 
against this unbearable thing. She was white as the 
dead, but her blue eyes burned black in the whiteness, 
full of intense life. 

“ Mistress Hopkins, oh, Mistress Hopkins, con- 
sider !” begged Rose Standish, also rising in great 
distress. “Think what it is that you are saying, and 
to whom! You cannot knowingly accuse this dear 
girl of connivance in a theft! You cannot accuse 
Giles of committing it! Why, Captain Myles is 
fonder of the lad than of any other in our company! 
Giles is upright and true, he says, and fearless. Pray, 
pray, take back these fearful words! You do not 
mean them, and when you will long to disown them 
they will cling to you and not forsake you, as does 
our mad injustice, to our lasting sorrow. What can 
be more foreign to our calling than harsh judgments, 
and angry accusations ?” 

“I am not speaking rashly, Mistress Standish/’ 
insisted Dame Eliza. 

“Not yet three hours gone Constantia saw lying 
in Damaris’s hammock a valuable packet of papers, 
left me in trust by her father. I asked her to mend 
the hammock, which was in disorder, but she called 
her brother to do the simple task. No one else hath 
entered the cabin at my end of it since. The packet 
is gone. Would you have more proof? Could there 



“ ‘Constantia, confess — confess and do not try to shield 
thy wicked brother’ ” 

















# 





























































































A PILGRIM MAID 


53 

be more proof, unless you saw the theft committed, 
which is manifestly impossible? ” 

“But why, good mistress, should the boy and girl 
steal these papers? What reason would there be for 
them to disturb their father’s property?” asked Rose 
Standish. 

“I have heard my uncle say, who is a barrister at 
home, that one must search for the motive of a crime 
if it is to be established.” She glanced with a slight 
smile at Constance’s stony face, who neither looked 
at her, nor smiled, but stood gazing in wide-eyed 
horror at her stepmother. 

“Precisely!” triumphed Dame Eliza. “Two mo- 
tives are clear, Mistress Standish, to those who are 
not too blinded by prejudice to see. Those Hopkins 
girl and boy hate me, fear and grudge my influence 
with their father. Would they not like to weaken 
it by the loss of papers entrusted to me, a loss that he 
would resent on his return? There is one motive. 
As to the other: you do not know, but I do, and so 
did they, that part of these papers related to an in- 
heritance in England, from which they would want 
their half-brother and sister excluded. Needs it 
more?” 

“Yes, yes, yes!” cried Rose Standish, as Constance 
groaned. “To any one knowing Giles and Constance 
this is no more than if you said Fee, fi, fo, fumf 
They plotting to weaken you with their father! 


A PILGRIM MAID 


54 

They stealing to keep the children from a share in 
their inheritance, so generous as they are, so good to 
the little ones! Fie, Mistress Hopkins! It is a 
grievous sin, you who are so strict in small matters, a 
grievous sin thus to judge another, still more those to 
whom you owe the obligation of one who has taken 
their dead mother’s place.” 

Constance began to tremble, and to struggle to 
speak. What she would have said, or what would 
have come of it, cannot be known, for at that moment 
the Billington boys, John and Francis, came hurtling 
down upon them, shouting: 

“The shallop, the shallop is back! It is almost 
upon us on the other side. Come see, come see! 
Dad is back, and all the rest, unless the savages have 
killed some of them,” Francis added the final words 
in solo. 

The present trouble must be laid aside for the 
great business in hand of welcome. 

Poor Constance turned in a frozen way to follow 
Rose and her stepmother to the other side of the ship. 

Her father — her dear, dear, longed-for father — was 
come back. He might be bringing them news of a 
favoured site where they would go to begin their 
new home. 

At last they were to step upon land again, to live 
in some degree the life they knew of household task 
and tilling, walking the woods, drawing water, build- 


A PILGRIM MAID 55 

ing fires — the life so long postponed, for which they 
all thirsted. 

But if she and Giles were to meet their father 
accused of theft! If they should see in those grave, 
kind, wise eyes a shadow of a doubt of his eldest 
children! Constance felt that she dared not see him 
come if such a thing were so much as possible. 

But when the shallop was made fast beside the 
Mayflower and Constance saw her father boarding 
the ship among the others of the returning expedition, 
and she met the glad light in his eyes resting upon 
her, all fear was swallowed up in immense relief and 
joy. 

With a low cry she sprang to meet him and fell 
sobbing on his shoulder, forgetful of the stern on- 
lookers who would condemn such display of feeling. 

“Oh, father, father, if you had never come back ! 99 
she murmured. 

“But I have come, daughter !” Stephen Hopkins 
reminded her. “Surely you are not weeping that I 
have come! We have great things to tell you, 
attacks by savages, some hardships, but we have 
brought grain which we found hidden by the Indians, 
and we have found the right place to establish our 
dwelling. ,, 

Constance raised her head and dried her eyes, 
still shaken by sobs. Her father looked keenly at 
the pale, drawn face, and knew that something more 


A PILGRIM MAID 


56 

than ordinary lay behind the overwhelming emotion 
with which she had received him. 

“Poor child, poor motherless child !” he thought, 
and the pity of that moment went far in influencing 
his subsequent treatment of Constance when he 
learned what had ailed her on his arrival. 

Now he patted her shoulder and turned toward the 
middle of the ship’s forward deck where his comrades 
of the expedition were relating their experiences, and 
displaying their trophies. 

Golden corn lay on the deck, spread upon a cloth, 
and the pilgrims who had remained with the ship were 
handling it as they listened to John Alden, who was 
made the narrator of this first report, having a ready 
tongue. 

“We found a pond of fresh water,” he was saying, 
“and not far from it cleared ground with the stubble 
of a gathered harvest upon it. Judge whether or not 
the sight was pleasant to us, as promising of fertile 
lands when the forests were hewn. And we came 
upon planks of wood that had lately been a house, 
and a kettle, and heaps of sand, with handmarks 
upon it, not long since made, where the sand had 
been piled and pressed down, into which, digging 
rapidly, we penetrated and found the corn you see 
here. The part of it we took, but the rest we once 
more covered and left it. And see ye, brethren, 
there have we the seed for our own next season’s 


A PILGRIM MAID 


57 

harvest, the which we were in such doubt of obtain- 
ing from home in time. It is a story for night, when 
we have leisure, to tell you of how we saw a few men 
and a dog, who ran from us, and we pursuing, hoping 
to speak to them, but they escaped us. And how 
later on, we saw savages cutting up great fish of 
tremendous size along the coast, and how we were 
attacked by another savage band one night. But 
all this we reserve for another telling. We came at 
last into a harbour and found it deep enough for the 
Mayflower on our sounding it. And landing we 
marched into the land and found fields, and brooks, 
and on the whole that it was a fit country for 
our beginning. For the rest it is as you shall de- 
cide in consultation, but of our party we are all in 
accord to urge you to accept this spot and hasten 
to take possession of it as the winter cometh on 
apace.” 

“Let us thank God for that He hath led us into a 
land of corn, and guided us for so many weary days, 
over so many dreary miles,” said William Brewster, 
the elder of the pilgrims. 

John Carver, who was chosen on the Mayflower as 
their governor, arose and out of a full heart thanked 
God for His mercies, as Elder Brewster had re- 
commended. 

The Mayflower weighed anchor in the morning to 
carry her brave freight to their new home. The 


A PILGRIM MAID 


58 

wind set hard against her, and it was the second day 
before she entered Plymouth harbour, as they 
resolved to name their new habitation, a name already 
bestowed by Captain Smith, and the name of their 
final port of embarkation in England. 

No sign of life met them as the pilgrims disem- 
barked. Silently, with full realization of what lay 
before them, and how fraught with significance this 
beginning was, the pilgrims passed from the ship 
that had so long been their home, and set foot — men, 
women, and children — upon the soil of America. 

A deep murmur arose when the last person was 
landed, and it happened that Constance Hopkins was 
the last to step from the boat to the rock on which the 
landing was made, and to jump light-heartedly to 
the sand, amid the tall, dried weeds that waved on the 
shore. 

“Praise God from whom all blessings flow,” said 
Elder Brewster, solemnly. The pilgrim band of 
colonists sang the doxology with bowed heads. 

Three days later the shores of the harbour echoed 
to the ring of axes, the sound of hammers, as the 
first house was begun, the community house, des- 
tined to shelter many families and to store their 
goods. 

“Merry Christmas, Father !” said Constance, 
coming up to her father in the cold of the early 
bleak December morning. 


A PILGRIM MAID 


59 

“S-s-sh!” warned her father, finger upon lip. 
“Do you not know, my daughter, that the keeping of 
Christmas is abjured by us as savouring of popery, 
and that to wish one merry at yuletide would be 
reckoned as unrighteousness among us?” 

“Ah, but Father, you do not think so! You do not 
go with all these opinions, and can it be wrong to be 
merry on the day that gladdened the world?” 
Constance pleaded. 

“Not wrong, but praiseworthy, to be merry under 
our present condition, to my way of thinking,” 
said Stephen Hopkins, glancing around at the drab 
emptiness of land and sky and harbour beyond. 
“Nay, child, I do not think it wrong to rejoice at 
Christmas, nor do I hold with the severity of most of 
our people, but because I believe that it will be good 
to begin anew in a land that is not oppressed, nor 
torn by king-made wars and sins, I have cast my lot, 
as has Myles Standish, who is of one mind with me, 
among this Plymouth band, and we must conform to 
custom. So wish me Merry Christmas, if you will, 
but let none hear you, and we will keep our heresies to 
ourselves.” 

“Yet the first house in the New World is begun 
to-day!” laughed Constance. “We are getting a 
Christmas gift.” 

“A happy portent to begin our common home on 
the day when the Prince of Peace came to dwell on 


60 A PILGRIM MAID 

earth! Let us hope it will bring us peace,” said her 
father. 

“ Peace ! ” cried Constance, with a swift and terrified 
remembrance of the accusation which her step- 
mother had threatened bringing against herself and 
Giles. 


CHAPTER V 


The New Year in the New Land 

T HE new year came in bringing with it a driv- 
ing storm from the Atlantic. The hoary pines 
threw up their rugged branches as if appealing to the 
heavens for mercy on the women and little children 
without shelter on the desolate coast. But the gray 
heavens did not relent; they poured snow and sleet 
down upon the infant colony, coating the creaking 
pines with ice that bent them low, and checked their 
intercession. 

As fast as willing hands could work, taking it in 
continuous shifts by night as well as day, the com- 
munity house went up. But the storm was upon the 
colonists before the shelter was ready for them, and 
even when the roof covered them, the cold laughed 
it to scorn, entering to wreak its will upon them. 

Sickness seized one after another of the pilgrim 
band, men and women alike, and the little children 
fought croup and pneumonia, nursed by women 
hardly more fit for the task than were the little 
victims. 

Rose Standish, already weakened by the suffering 
61 


62 


A PILGRIM MAID 


of the voyage, was among the first to be prostrated. 
She coughed ceaselessly though each violent breath 
wracked her frail body with pain. A bright colour 
burned in her cheeks, her beautiful eyes were clear 
and dilated, she smiled hopefully when her com- 
panions in exile and suffering spoke to her, and 
assured them that she was “much, much better,” 
speaking pantingly, by an effort. 

The discouragement with which she had looked 
upon the coast when the Mayflower arrived, gave 
place to hope in her. She spoke confidently of 
“next spring,” of the “house Captain Myles would 
build her,” of all that she should do “when warm 
weather came.” 

Constance, to whom she most confided her plans, 
often turned away to hide her tears. She knew that 
Doctor Fuller and the more experienced women 
thought that for this English rose there would be no 
springtime upon earth. 

Constance had other troubles to bear as well as the 
hardships and sorrows common to the sorely beset 
community. She seemed, to herself, hardly to be a 
young girl, so heavily weighted was she with the 
burden that she carried. She wondered to remember 
that if she had stayed in England she should have 
been laughing and singing like other girls of her age, 
skating now on the Sherbourne, if it were frozen over, 
as it well might be. Perhaps she might be dancing, 


A PILGRIM MAID 


63 

if she were visiting her cousins in Warwickshire, her 
own birthplace, for the cousins were merry girls, and 
like all of Constance’s mother’s family, quite free 
from puritanical ideas, brought up in the English 
Church, so not debarred from the dance. 

Constance had no heart to regret her loss of 
youthful happiness; she was so far aloof from it, so 
sad, that she could not rise to the level of feeling its 
charm. Dame Eliza Hopkins had carried out her 
threat, had accused Giles of the theft of his father’s 
papers, and Constance of being party to his wrong- 
doing, if not actually its instigator. 

It had only happened that morning; Constance 
heavily awaited developments. She jumped guiltily 
when she heard her father’s voice speaking her name, 
and felt his hand upon her shoulder. 

She faced him, white and shaken, to meet his 
troubled eyes intently fastened upon her. 

“The storm is bad, Constance, but it is not warm 
within. Put on your coat and come with me. I 
must speak with you,” he said. 

In silence Constance obeyed him. Pulling over 
her head a hood that, like a deep cowl, was attached 
to her coat, she followed her father into the storm, 
and walked beside him toward the marshy shore 
whither, without speaking to her, he strode. 

Arrived at the sedgy ocean line he halted, and 
turned upon her. 


A PILGRIM MAID 


64 

“Constance,” he began, sternly, “my wife tells 
me that valuable papers which I entrusted to her 
keeping have disappeared. She tells me further 
that she had dropped them — carelessly, as I have told 
her — into the hammock in which your little sister 
slept and that you saw them there, commenting upon 
it; that you soon called Giles to set right some 
slight matter in the hammock; and that shortly after 
you and he had left her, she discovered her loss. 
What do you know of this? Tell me all that you 
know, and tell me the truth.” 

Constance’s fear left her at this word. Throwing 
up her head she looked her father in the eyes, nearly 
on a level with her own as she stood upon a sandy 
hummock. “It needs not telling me to speak the 
truth, Father. I am your daughter and my mother’s 
daughter; it runs not in my blood to lie,” she said. 

Stephen Hopkins touched her arm lightly, a look 
of relief upon his face. 

“Thank you for that reminder, my girl,” he said. 
“It is true, and Giles is of the same strain. Know 
you aught of this misfortune?” 

“Nothing, Father,” said Constance. “And be- 
cause I know nothing whatever about it, in answering 
you I have told you all that I have to tell.” 

“And Giles ” began her father, but stopped. 

“Nor Giles,” Constance repeated, amending his 
beginning. “Giles is headstrong, Father and I fear 


A PILGRIM MAID 65 

for him often, but you know that he is honourable, 
truth-telling. Would your son steal from you?” 

“But your stepmother says no one entered the 
cabin after you had left it before she discovered her 
loss,” insisted Stephen Hopkins. “What am I to 
think? What do you think, Constance?” 

“I think that there is an explanation we do not 
know. I think that my stepmother hates Giles and 
me, especially him, as he has the first claim to the 
inheritance that she would have for her own children. 
I think that she has seized this opportunity to poison 
you against us,” said Constance, with spirited daring. 
“Oh, Father, dear, dear Father, do not let her do this 
thing!” 

“Nay, child, you are unjust,” said her father, 
gently. “I confess to Mistress Eliza’s jealousy of 
you, and that there is not great love for you in her. 
But, Constance, do you love her, you or Giles? And 
that she is not so base as you suspect is shown by the 
fact that she has delayed until to-day to tell me of 
this loss, dreading, as she hath told me, to put you 
wrong in my eyes. Fie for shame, Constance, to 
suspect her of such outrageous wickedness, she 
who is, after all, a good woman, as she sees good- 
ness.” 

“Father, if the packet were lost through her care- 
lessness, would you not blame her? Is it not likely 
that she would shield herself at our cost, even if she 


66 


A PILGRIM MAID 


would not be glad to lower us, as I am sure she would 
be?” persisted Constance. 

“Well, well, this is idle talk!” Stephen Hopkins 
said, impatiently. “The truth must be sifted out, 
and suspicions are wrong, as well as useless. One 
word before I go to Giles. Upon your sacred honour, 
Constantia Hopkins, and by your mother’s memory, 
can you assure me that you know absolutely nothing 
of the loss of this packet of papers?” 

“Upon my honour and by my mother’s memory, 
I swear that I do not know so much as that the packet 
is lost, except as Mistress Hopkins says~that it is,” 
said Constance. Then with a swift change of tone 
she begged : 

“Oh, Father, Father, when you go to Giles, be care- 
ful, be kind, I pray you! Giles is unhappy. He is 
ill content under the injustice we both bear, but I 
with a girl’s greater submission. He is ready to 
break all bounds and he will do so if he feels that you 
do not trust him, listen to his enemy’s tales against 
him. Please, please, dear Father, be gentle with 
Giles. He loves you as well as I do, but where your 
distrust of me would kill me, because I love you, 
Giles’s love for you will turn to bitterness, if you let 
him feel that you are half lost to him.” 

^Nonsense, Constance,” said her father, though 
kindly, “Giles is a boy and must be dealt with firmly. 
It will never do to coddle him, to give him his head. 


A PILGRIM MAID 


67 

You are a girl, senstive and easily wounded. A boy 
is another matter. I will not have him setting up 
his will against mine, nor opposing discipline for his 
good. It is for him to clear himself of what looks 
ill, not resent our seeing the looks of it.” 

Constance almost wrung her hands. 

“Oh, Father, Father, do not go to Giles in that way! 
Sorrow will come of it. Think how you would feel 
to be thus suspected ! A boy is not less sensitive than 
a girl; I fear he is more sensitive in his honour than 
are we. Oh, I am but a girl, but I know that I am 
right about Giles. I think we are given to under- 
stand as no man can how to deal with a proud, sullen 
boy like Giles, because God means us to be the 
mothers of boys some day! Be kind to Giles, dear 
Father; let him see that you trust him, as indeed, 
indeed you may!” 

“Let us go back out of the storm to such shelter as 
we have, Constance,” said Stephen Hopkins, smiling 
with masculine toleration for a foolish girl. “I have 
accepted your solemn assurance that you are ignor- 
ant of this theft, if theft it be. Be satisfied that I 
have done this, and leave me to deal with my son as 
I see fit. I will not be unjust to him, but he must 
meet me respectfully, submissively, and answer to 
the evidence against him. I have not been pleased 
of late with Giles's ill-concealed resistance.” 

This time Constance did wring her hands, as 


68 


A PILGRIM MAID 


she followed her father, close behind him. She at- 
tempted no further remonstrance, knowing that to 
do so would be not only to harm Giles’s cause, but to 
arouse her father’s quick anger against herself. But 
as she walked with bent head through the cutting, 
beating storm, she wondered why Giles should not 
be resistant to his life, and her heart ached with pity- 
ing apprehension for her brother. 

All that long day of darkening storm and anxiety 
Constance did not see Giles. That signified nothing, 
however, for Giles was at work with the men making 
winter preparations which could not be deferred, 
albeit the winter was already upon them, while 
Constance was occupied with the nursing for which 
the daily increase of sickness made more hands re- 
quired than were able to perform it. 

Humility Cooper was dangerously ill, burning with 
fever, struggling for breath. Constance was fond 
of the little maid who seemed so childish beside her, 
and gladly volunteered to go again into the storm 
to fetch her the fresh water for which she implored. 

At the well which had been dug, and over which a 
pump from the ship had been placed and made 
effective, Constance came upon Giles, marching up 
and down impatiently, and with him was John 
Billington, his chosen comrade, the most unruly of 
all the younger pilgrims. 

“Well, at last, Con!” exclaimed Giles. “I’ve 


A PILGRIM MAID 69 

been here above an hour. I thought to meet you 
here. What has kept you so long?” 

“Why, Giles, I could not know that you were 
awaiting me,” said Constance, reasonably. “Oh, 
they are so ill, our poor friends yonder! I am sure 
many of them will go on a longer pilgrimage and 
never see this colony established.” 

“Lucky they!” said Giles, bitterly. “Why should 
they want to? Nobody wants to die, and of course 
I am sorry for them, but better be dead than alive 
here — if it is to be called alive!” 

“Oh, dear Giles, do you hate it so?” sighed Con- 
stance. “Nothing is wrong?” she added, glancing 
at John Biliington, longing to ask her question more 
directly, but not wishing to betray to him the trouble 
upon her mind. 

“Never mind talking before John,” said Giles, 
catching the glance. “He knows all about it; I 
have told him. Have you cleared yourself, Sis, or 
are you also under suspicion?” 

“Oh, dear Giles,” said Constance again. “You 
are not — Didn’t Father believe? — Isn’t it all right?” 
She groped for the least offensive form for her ques- 
tion. 

“I don’t know whether or not Father believed 
that I am a thief,” burst out Giles, furiously. “Nor 
a whit do I care. I told him the word of a man of 
honour was enough, and I gave him mine that I knew 


A PILGRIM MAID 


70 

nothing about his wife’s lies. I told him it seemed to 
me clear enough that she had made away with the 
papers herself, to defraud us. And I told him I had 
no proof of my innocence to give him, but it was not 
necessary. I told him I wouldn’t go into it further; 
that it had to end right there, that I was not called 
upon to accept, nor would I submit to such a rank 
insult from any man, and that his being my father 
made it worse, not better.” 

“Oh, Giles, what did he say? Oh, Giles, what a 
misfortune!” cried Constance, clasping her hands. 

“What did he say?” echoed Giles. “What do you 
think would be said when two such tempers as my 
father’s and mine clash? For, mark you, Con, 
Stephen Hopkins would not stoop to vindicate him- 
self from the charge of stealing. Stealing , remember, 
not a crime worthy of a gentleman.” 

“Oh, Giles, what crime is worthy of a gentleman ? ” 
Constance grieved. “Is there any dignity in sin, 
and any justice in varnishing some sins with the 
gloss of custom? But indeed, indeed, it is cruelly 
hard on you, Giles dear. Tell me what happened.” 

“The only thing that could happen. My father 
forgets that I am not a child. He flew into that mad- 
ness of anger that we know him capable of, railed at 
me for my impertinence, insisted on my proving 
myself innocent of this charge, and declared that 
until I did, with full apology for the way I had re- 


A PILGRIM MAID 


7 1 

ceived him, I was no son of his. So — Good day, Mis- 
tress Constantia Hopkins, I hope that you are well? 
I once had a sister that was like you, but sister have 
I none now, since I am not the son of my reputed 
father,” said Giles, with a sneer and a deep bow. 

Constance was in despair. The bitter mockery in 
Giles’s young face, the bleak unhappiness in his eyes 
stabbed her heart. She knew him too well to doubt 
that this mood was dangerous. 

“My own dear brother!” she cried, throwing her 
arms around him. “Oh, don’t steel yourself so 
bitterly! Father loves you so much that he is stern 
with you, but it will all come right; it must, once this 
hot anger that you both share is past. You are too 
alike, that is all! Beg his pardon, Giles, but repeat 
that your word is enough to prove you innocent of 
the accusation. Father will see that, and yield you 
that, when you have met him half way by an apology 
for hard words.” 

“See here, Con, why should I do that?” demanded 
Giles. “Is there anything in this desolation that I 
should want to stay here? I’ve had enough of 
Puritans; and Eliza is one of the strongest of them. 
Except for your sake, little Sis, why should I stay? 
And I will one day return for you. No, no. Con; I 
will sail for England when the ship returns, and make 
my own fortune, somewhere, somehow.” 

“Dame Eliza is not what she is because she is a 


A PILGRIM MAID 


72 

Puritan. She is what she is because she is Dame 
Eliza. Think of the others whom we all love and 
would fain be like,” Constance reminded him. “We 
must all be true to the enterprise we have under- 
taken, and ” 

“Look here, sweet Con,” John Billington inter- 
rupted her. “There is nothing to hold Giles to this 
dreary enterprise, nor to hold me, either. I am not 
in like plight to him. If any one accused me, suspected 
me as your father has him, and still more my father 
did it, Td let these east winds blow over the space Td 
have filled in this settlement. Im for adventure as 
it is, though my father cares little what Francis and I 
do, being a reckless, daring man who surely belongs 
not in this psalm-singing company. Giles and I will 
strike out into the wilderness and try our fortunes. 
We will try the savages. They can be no worse than 
white men, nor half as outrageous as your stepmother. 
Why, Con, how can you want your brother tamely to 
sit down under such an insult? No man should be 
called upon to prove himself honest! Giles must be 
off. Let your father find out for himself who is to 
blame for the loss of the papers, and repent too late 
for lending ear to his wife’s story.” 

Constance stared for a moment at John, realizing 
how every word he said found a ready echo in Giles’s 
burning heart, how potent would be this unruly 
boy’s influence to draw her brother after him, now, 


A PILGRIM MAID 


73 

when Giles was wounded in his two strongest feelings 
— his pride of honour, his love for his father — and she 
prayed in her heart for inspiration to deal wisely with 
this difficult situation. 

Suddenly the inspiration came to her. She found 
it in John’s last words. 

“Nay, but Jack!” she cried, using Francis’s name 
for his brother, disapproved by the elders who would 
have none of nicknames. “If needs be that Giles 
must leave this settlement, if he cannot be happy 
here, let him at least bide till he has cleared his name 
of a foul stain, for his honour’s sake, for the sake of 
his dead mother, for my sake, who must abide here 
and cannot escape, being but a girl, young and help- 
less. Is it right that I should be pointed out till I 
am old as the sister of him who was accused of a 
great wrong and, cowardlike, ran away because he 
could not clear himself, nor meet the shame, and so 
admitted his guilt? No! Rather do you, John 
Billington, instead of urging him to run away, bend 
all your wit — of which you do not lack plenty! — to 
the ferreting out of this mystery. That would be the 
manly course, the kind course to me, and you have 
always called yourself my friend. Then prove it! 
Help my brother to clear himself and never say one 
more word to urge him away till he can go with a 
stainless name. Our father does not doubt Giles, 
of that I am certain. He is sore beset, and is a 


A PILGRIM MAID 


74 

choleric man. What can any man do when his 
children are on the one hand, and his wife on the 
other? Be patient with our father, Giles, but in any 
case do not go away till this is cleared. ” 

“She talks like a lawyer !” cried John Billington 

with his boisterous laugh “Like what was that 

play I once saw before I got, or Father got into this 
serious business of being a Puritan? Wrote by a 
fellow called Shakespeare? Ah, I have it! Merchant 
of Venison! In that the girl turns lawyer and 
cozzens the Jew. Connie is another pleader like 
that one. Well, what say you, Giles, my friend? 
Strikes me she is right. ” 

“It is not badly thought of, Constance/’ admitted 
Giles. “But can it be done? For if Mistress Hop- 
kins has had a hand in spiriting away those papers 
for her own advantage and my undoing, then would 
it be hard to prove. What say you ? ” 

“Oh, no, no, no!” cried Constance. “Truth is 
mighty, good is stronger than evil! Patience, 
Giles, patience for a while, and let us three bind our- 
selves to clear our good name. Will you, will you 
promise, my brother? And John?” 

“Well, then, yes,” said Giles, reluctantly; and 
Constance clasped her hands with a cry of joy. “For 
a time I will stay and see what can be done, but not 
for long. Mark you, Con, I do not promise long to 
abide in this unbearable life of mine.” 


A PILGRIM MAID 


75 

“Sure will I promise, Connie,” assented John. 
“Why should I go? I would not go without Giles, 
and it was not for my sake first we were going.” 

“Giles, dear Giles, thank you, thank you!” cried 
Constance. “I could not have borne it had you not 
yielded. Think of me thus left and be glad that you 
are willing to stand by your one own sister, Giles. 
And let us hope that in staying we shall come upon 
better days. Now I must take this ewer of water to 
poor Humility who is burned and miserable with 
thirst and pain. She will think I am never coming to 
relieve her! Oh, boys, it seems almost wicked to 
think of our good names, of any of our little trials, 
when half our company is so stricken!” 

“You are a good girl, Connie,” said John Billington, 
awkwardly helping Constance to assume her pitcher, 
his sympathy betrayed by his awkwardness. “I hope 
you are not chilled standing here so long with us.” 

“No, not I ! ” said Constance, bravely. “The New 
Year, and the New World are teaching me not to 
mind cold which must be long borne before the year 
grows old. They are teaching me much else, dear 
lads. So good-bye, and bless you!” 

“ ’Twould have been downright contemptible to 
have deserted her,” said Giles and John in the same 
breath, and they laughed as they watched her de- 
part. 


CHAPTER VI 


Stout Hearts and Sad Ones 

C ONSTANCE turned away from the boys feeling 
that, till the trouble hanging over Giles was 
settled, waking or sleeping she could think of nothing 
else. When she reached the community house she 
forgot it, nor did it come to her as more than a 
deeper shadow on the universal darkness for weeks. 

She found that during her brief absence Edward 
Tilley’s wife had died; she had known that she was 
desperately ill, but the end had come suddenly. 
Edward Tilley himself was almost through with his 
struggle, and this would leave Humility, herself a 
very sick child, quite alone, for she had come in her 
cousins’ care. Constance bent over her to give her 
the cooling water which she had fetched her. 

“ Elizabeth and I are alike now,” whispered 
Humility, looking up at Constance with eyes dry of 
tears, but full of misery. “Cousin John Tilley was 
her father, and Cousin Edward and his wife but my 
guardians, yet they were all I had.” Elizabeth 
Tilley had been orphaned two weeks before, and 
now John Tilley’s brother, following him, would 
76 


A PILGRIM MAID 


77 

leave Humility Cooper, as she said, bereft as was 
Elizabeth. 

“Not all you had, dear Humility,” Constance 
whispered in her ear, afraid to speak aloud for there 
were in the room many sick whom they might disturb. 

“My father will protect you, unless there is some- 
one whom you would liefer have, and we will be 
sisters and meet the spring with hope and love for 
each other, together. ,, 

“They will send for me to come home to England, 
my other cousins, of that I am sure. Elizabeth has 
no one on her side to claim her. But England is far, 
far away, and I am more like to join my cousins, 
John and Edward Tilley and their kind, dear wives 
where they are now than to live to make that fearful 
voyage again, ” moaned Humility, turning away her 
head despairingly. 

“Follow John and Edward Tilley! Yes, but not 
for many a day!” Constance reassured her, shaking 
up the girl’s pillow, one deft arm beneath her head to 
raise it. 

“Sleep, Humility dear, and do not think. Or 
rather think of how sweetly the wind will blow 
through the pines when the spring sunshine calls you 
out into it, and we go, you and I, to seek what new 
flowers we may find in the New World.” 

“No, no,” Humility moved her head on the 
pillow in negation. “I will be good, Constance; I 


78 A PILGRIM MAID 

will not murmur. I will remember that I lie here in 
God’s hand; but, oh Constance, I cannot think of 
pleasant things, I cannot hope. I will be patient, 
but I cannot hope. Dear, dear, sweet Constance, 
you are like my mother, and yet we are almost one 
age. What should we all do without you, Con- 
stance?” 

Constance turned away to meet Doctor Fuller’s 
grave gaze looking down upon her. “I echo Hu- 
mility’s question, Constance Hopkins: What should 
we all do without you? What a blessed thing has 
come to you thus to comfort and help these pilgrims, 
who are sore stricken! Come with me a moment; 
I have something to say to you.” 

Constance followed this beloved physician into 
the kitchen where her stepmother was busy preparing 
broth, her Mayflower baby, Oceanus, tied in a chair 
on a pillow, Damaris sitting on the floor beside him 
in unnatural quiet. 

Dame Eliza looked up as the doctor and Constance 
entered, but instantly dropped her eyes, a dull red 
mounting in her face. 

She knew that the girl was ministering to the dying 
with skill and sympathy far beyond her years, and 
she remembered the patient sweetness with which 
Constance, during the voyage over, forgiving her 
injustice, had ministered to her when she was 
suffering — had tenderly cared for little Damaris. 


A PILGRIM MAID 


79 

Dame Eliza had the grace to feel a passing shame, 
though not enough to move her to repentance, to rep- 
aration. 

“Constance,” Doctor Fuller said, “I am going to 
lay upon you a charge too heavy for your youth, but 
unescapable. You know how many of us have been 
laid to rest out yonder, pilgrims indeed, their pil- 
grimage over. Many more are to follow them. 
Mistress Standish among the first, but there are 
many whose end I see at hand. I fear the spring will 
find us a small colony, but those who remain must 
make up in courage for those who have left them. I 
want you to undertake to be my right hand. Priscilla 
Mullins hath already lost her mother, and her father 
and her brother will not see the spring. Yet she keeps 
her steady heart. She will prepare me such remedies 
as I can command here. Truth to tell, the supply I 
brought with me is running low; I did not allow for 
the need of so many of one kind. Priscilla is reliable; 
steady in purpose, memory, and hand. She will see to 
the remedies. But you, brave Constance, will you be 
my medical student, visiting my patients, lingering to 
see that my orders are carried out, nursing, sustain- 
ing? In a word do what you have already done 
since we landed, but on a greater scale, as an es- 
tablished duty?” 

“If I can,” said Constance, simply. 

“You can; there is no one else that I can count 


8o 


A PILGRIM MAID 


upon. The older men among us are dying, leaving 
the affairs of the colony to be carried on by the young 
ones. In like manner I must call upon so young a girl 
as you to be my assistant. The older women are do- 
ing, and must do, still more important work in pre- 
paring the nourishment on which these lives depend 
and which the young ones are not proficient to pre- 
pare.” 

Doctor Fuller looked smilingly toward Dame Eliza 
as he said this, as if he feared her taking offence at 
Constance’s promotion, and sought to placate her. 

Mistress Hopkins gave no sign of knowing that he 
had turned to her, but she said to Damaris, as if by 
chance: “This broth may do more than herb brews 
toward curing, though your mother is not a physi- 
cian’s aid,” and Doctor Fuller knew that he had been 
right. 

A week later, though Humility Cooper was recover- 
ing, many more had fallen ill, and several had 
died. 

It was late in January; the winter was set in full of 
wrath against those who had dared array themselves 
to defy its power in the wilderness, but the sun shone 
brightly, though without warmth-giving mercy, upon 
Plymouth. 

There was an armed truce between Giles and his 
father. The boy would not beg his father’s pardon 
for having defied him. His love for his father had 


A PILGRIM MAID 


81 


been of the nature of hero-worship, and now, turned 
to bitterness, it increased the strength of his pride, 
smarting under false accusation, to resist his father. 

On the other hand Stephen Hopkins, high-tem- 
pered, strong of will, was angry and hurt that his 
son refused to justify himself, or to plead with him. 
So the elder and the younger, as Constance had said, 
too much alike, were at a deadlock of suffering and 
anger toward each other. 

Stephen Hopkins was beginning his house on what 
he had named Leyden Street, in memory of the 
pilgrims’ refuge in Holland, though only by the eyes 
of faith could a street be discerned to bear the name. 
Like all else in Plymouth colony, Leyden Street was 
rather a matter of prophecy than actuality. 

Giles was helping to build the house. All day he 
worked in silence, bearing the cold without complaint, 
but in no wise evincing the slightest interest in what 
he did. At night, in spite of the stringent laws of the 
Puritan colony, Giles contrived often to slip away 
with John Billington into the woods. John Billing- 
ton’s father, who was as unruly as his boys, connived 
at these escapades. He was perpetually quarrelling 
with Myles Standish, whose duty it was to enforce 
the law, and who did that duty without relenting, 
although by all the colonists, except the Billingtons, 
he was loved as well as respected. 

Early one morning Constance hurried out of the 


82 


A PILGRIM MAID 


community house, tears running down her cheeks, to 
meet Captain Myles coming toward it. 

“Why, pretty Constance, don’t grieve, child!” 
said the Plymouth captain, heartily. 

“Giles hath come to no harm, I warrant you, 
though he has spent the night again with that harum- 
scarum Jack Billington, and this time Francis 
Billington, too.” 

“Oh, Captain Standish, it is not Giles! I forgot 
Giles,” gasped Constance. 

“Rose?” exclaimed the captain, sharply. 

Constance bent her head. “She is passing. I 
came to seek you,” she said, and together she and the 
captain went to Rose’s side. 

They found Doctor Fuller there holding Rose’s 
hand as she lay with closed eyes, breathing lightly. 
In his other hand he held his watch measuring the 
brief moments left, in which Rose Standish should be 
a part of time. Mary Brewster, the elder’s wife, 
held up a warning finger not to disturb Rose, but 
Doctor Fuller looked quietly toward Captain Stand- 
ish. 

“It matters not now, Myles,” he said. “You 
cannot harm her. There are but few moments left.” 

Myles Standish sprang forward, fell upon his knees, 
and raised Rose in his arms. 

“Rose of the world, my English blossom, what 
have I done to bring thee here?” he sobbed, with a 


A PILGRIM MAID 


83 

strong man’s utter abandonment of grief, and with 
none of the Puritan habit of self-restraint. 

“ Wherever thou hadst gone, I would have chosen, 
my husband! I loved thee, Myles, I loved thee 
Myles!” she said, so clearly that everyone heard her 
sweet voice echo to the farthest corner of the room, 
and for the last time. 

For with that supreme effort to comfort her hus- 
band, disarming his regret, Rose Standish died. 

They bore Rose’s body, so light that it was scarce 
a burden to the two men who carried it as in a litter, 
forth to the spot upon the hillside whither they had 
already made so many similar processions, which was 
fast becoming as thickly populated as was that por- 
tion of the colony occupied by the living. 

But as the sun mounted higher, although the 
March winds cut on some days, then as now they do 
in March, yet, then as now, there were soft and 
dreamy days under the ascending sun’s rays, made 
more effective by the moderating sea and flat sands. 

The devasting diseases of winter began to abate; 
the pale, weak remnants of the Mayflower s passen- 
gers crept out to walk with a sort of wonder upon the 
earth which was new to them, and which they had so 
nearly quitted that nothing, even of those aspects of 
things that most recalled the home land, seemed to 
them familiar. 

The men began to break the soil for farming, and 


A PILGRIM MAID 


84 

to bring forth and discuss the grain which they had 
found hidden by the savages — most fortunately, 
for without it there would have been starvation to 
look forward to after all that they had endured, 
since no supplies from England had yet come after 
them. 

There was talk of the Mayflower s return; she had 
lain all winter in Plymouth harbour because the 
Pilgrims had required her shelter and assistance. 
Soon she was to depart, a severance those ashore 
dreaded, albeit there was well-grounded lack of 
confidence in the honesty of her captain, Jones, 
whom the more outspoken among the colonists de- 
nounced openly as a rascal. 

Little Damaris was fretful, as she so often was, 
one afternoon early in March; the child was not 
strong and consequently was peevish. Constance 
was trying to amuse her, sitting with the child, 
warmly wrapped from the keen wind, in the warmth 
of the sunshine behind the southern wall of the com- 
munity house. 

“Tell me a story, Constance,” begged Damaris, 
though it was not “a story,” but several that Con- 
stance had already told her. “Make a fairy story. 
I won’t tell Mother you did. Fairy stories are not 
lies, no matter what they say, are they, Connie? I 
know they are not true and you tell me they are not 
true, so why are they lies? Why does Mother say 


A PILGRIM MAID 85 

they are lies ? Are they bad, are they, Connie ? Tell 
me one, anyway; I won’t tell her.” 

“Ah, little Sister, I would rather not do things that 
we cannot tell your mother about,” said Constance. 
“I do not think a fairy story is wrong, because we 
both know it is make-believe, that there are no 
fairies, but your mother thinks them wrong, and I 
do not want you to do what you will not tell her you 
do. Suppose you tell me a story, instead? That 
would be fairer; only think how many, many stories 
I have told you, and how long it is since you have told 
me the least little word of one!” 

“Well,” agreed Damaris, but without enthusiasm. 
“What shall I tell you about? Not a Bible one.” 

“No, perhaps not,” Constance answered, looking 
lazily off to sea. Then, because she was looking sea- 
ward, she added: 

“Shall it be one about a sailor? That ought to be 
an interesting story.” 

“A true sailor, or a made-up one?” asked Damaris, 
getting aroused to her task. 

“Do you know one about a real sailor?” Constance 
somewhat sleepily inquired. 

“Here is a true one,” announced Damaris. 

“Once upon a time there was a sailor, and he sailed 
on a ship named the Mayflower. And he came in. 
And he said: How are you, little girl? And I said: 
I am pretty well, but my name is Damaris Hopkins. 


86 


A PILGRIM MAID 


And he said: What a nice name. And I said: Yes, it 
is. And he said: Where is your folks? and I said: 
I don’t know where my mother went out of the cabin 
just this minute. But my sister was around, and my 
brother Giles was here, fixing my hammock, ’cause 
it hung funny and let me roll over on myself and 
folded me hurt. And my other brother couldn’t go 
nowheres ’tall, because he was born when we was 
sailing here, and he can’t walk. And the sailor man 
said: Yes, there were two babies on the ship when we 
came that we didn’t have when we started, and show 
me your hammock. And I did, and he said it was a 

nice ham Constance, what’s the matter? I felt 

you jump, and you look scared. Is it Indians? 
Connie, Connie, don’t let ’em get me!” 

“No, no, child, there aren’t any Indians about,” 
Constance tried to laugh. “Did I jump? Some- 
times people do jump when they almost fall asleep, 
and I was just as sleepy as a fireside cat when you be- 
gan to tell me the story. Now I am not one bit 
sleepy! That is the most interesting story I have 
heard almost — yes, I think quite — in all my life! 
And it is a true one?” 

“Yes, every bit true,” said Damaris, proudly. 

“And the sailor went into the cabin, and saw your 
hammock, and said it was a nice one, did he? Well, 
so it is a nice one! Did your mother see the man?” 
asked Constance, trying to hide her impatience. 


A PILGRIM MAID 


87 

“No,” Damaris shook her head, decidedly. 
“ Mother was coming, but the man just put his hand 
in and set my hammock swinging. Then he went 
out, and Mother was stopping and shedidn’t see him. 
And neither did I, not any more, ever again/’ 

“Did you tell your mother about this sailor?” 
Constance inquired. 

“Oh, no,” sighed Damaris. “I didn’t tell her. 
She doesn’t like stories so much as we do. I tell you 
all my stories, and you tell me all yours, don’t we, 
Constance? I didn’t tell Mother. She says: ‘That’s 
Hopkins to like stories, and music, and art.’ What’s 
art, Connie? And she says: ‘You don’t get those 
idle ways from my side, so don’t let me hear any fool- 
ish talk, for you will be punished for idle talk.’ 
What’s that, Connie?” 

“Oh, idle talk is — idle talk is hard to explain to you, 
little Damaris! It is talk that has nothing to it, 
unless it may have something harmful to it. You’ll 
understand when you are old enough to make what 
you do really matter. But this has not been idle 
talk to-day! Far, far from idle talk was that fine 
'story you told me ! Suppose we keep that story all to 
ourselves, not tell it to anyone at all, will you please, 
my darling little sister? Then, perhaps, some day, I 
will ask you to tell it to Father! Would not that be a 
great day for Damaris? But only if you don’t tell 
it to any one till then, not to your mother, not to 


88 


A PILGRIM MAID 


any one!” Constance insisted, hoping to impress the 
child to the point of secrecy, yet not to let her feel 
how much Constance herself set upon this request. 

“ I won’t ! I won’t tell it to any one ; not to Mother, 
not to any one,” Damaris repeated the form of her 
vow. Then she looked up into Constance’s face with 
a puzzled frown. 

“But you wouldn’t tell a fairy story, because you 
said you didn’t want things I couldn’t tell mother! 
And now you say I mustn’t tell her about my story!” 
she said. 

Constance burst out laughing, and hugged Damaris 
to her, hiding in the child’s hood a merrier face than 
she had worn for many, many a day. 

“You have caught me, little Damaris!” she cried. 
“Caught me fairly! But that was a fairy story, 
don’t you see? This isn’t, this is true. So this is 
not to be told, not now, do you see?” 

Damaris said “yes,” slowly, with the frown in her 
smooth little brow deepening. It was puzzling; 
she did not really see, but since Constance expected 
hertoseeshesaid “yes,” and felt curiously bewildered. 
However, what Constance said was to her small half- 
sister not merely law, but gospel. Constance was 
always right, always the most lovable, the most de- 
lightful person whom Damaris knew. 

“All right, Connie. I won’t tell anyone my sailor- 
man story,” she said at last, clearing up. 


A PILGRIM MAID 89 

“Just now,” Constance supplemented her. “Some 
day you shall tell it, Damaris! Some day I shall 
want you to tell it ! And now, little Sister, will you go 
into the house and tell Oceanus to hurry up and grow 
big enough to run about, because the world, our new 
world, is getting to be a lovely place in the spring 
sunshine, and he must grow big enough to enjoy it as 
fast as he can? I must find Giles; I have something 
beautiful, beautiful to tell him!” 

She kissed Damaris before setting her on her feet, 
and the child kissed her in return, clinging to her. 

“You are so funny, Constance!” she said, in great 
satisfaction with her sister’s drollery in a world that 
had been filled with gloom and illness for what seemed 
to so young a child, almost all her life. 

“Ah, I want to be, Damaris! I want to be funny, 
and happy, and glad! Oh, I want to be!” cried 
Constance, and ran away at top speed with a rare 
relapse into her proper age and condition. 


CHAPTER VII 


The Persuasive Power of Justice and Violence 

J OHN BILLINGTON had been forced reluc- 
tantly to work on the houses erecting in the 
Plymouth plantation. 

He was not lazy, but he was adventuresome, and 
steady employment held for him no attraction. 
Since Captain Standish and the others in authority 
would deal with him if he tried to shirk his share of 
daily work, John made it as bearable as possible by 
joining himself to Giles in the building of the Hop- 
kins house. Constance knew that she should find 
the two boys building her future home, and thither 
she ran at her best speed, and Constance could run 
like a nymph. 

“Oh, Giles !” she panted, coming up to the two 
amateur carpenters, and rejoicing ' that they were 
alone. 

“Oh, Con!” Giles echoed, turning on his ladder to 
face her, half sitting on a rung. “What's forward? 
Hath the king sent messengers calling me home to be 
prime minister? Sorry to disappoint His Royal 
Highness, but I can’t go. I’d liefer be a trapper!’’ 
90 


A PILGRIM MAID 


9i 

“And that’s what your appointment is!” triumphed 
Constance. “You’re to trap big game, no less than 
a human rascal! Oh, Giles and Jack, do hear what 
I’ve got to tell you!” 

“But for us to hear, you must tell, Con!” John 
Billington reminded her. “I’ll bet a golden doubloon 
you’ve got wind of the missing papers!” 

“We don’t bet, Jack, but if we did you’d win your 
wager,” Constance laughed. “Damaris told me 
'a true story,’ and now I’m going to tell it to you. 
Fancy that little person having this story tucked 
away in her brain all these weary days!” 

And Constance related Damaris’s entertainment of 
her, to which John Billington listened with many 
running comments of tongue and whistled exclama- 
tions, but Giles in perfect silence, betraying no ex- 
citement. 

“Here’s a merry chance, Giles!” John cried as 
soon as Constance ended. “What with savages 
likely to visit us and robbers for us to hunt, why life 
in the New World may be bearable after all!” 

Giles ignored his jubilant comment. 

“I shall go out to the Mayflower and get the 
packet,” he said. “It is too late to-day, but in the 
morning early I shall make it. I suppose you will go 
with me, Jack?” 

“Safe to suppose it,” said John. “I’d swim after 
you if you started without me.” 


92 


A PILGRIM MAID 


“Won’t you take Captain Standish? I mean 
won’t you ask him to help you?” asked Constance, 
anxiously. “It is sufficient matter to engage him, 
and he is our protector in all dangers.” 

“We need no protection, little Sis,” said Giles, 
loftily. “It hath been my experience that a just 
cause is sufficient. We have suspected the master 
of the Mayflower of trickery all along.” 

Constance could not forbear a smile at her brother’s 
worldly-wise air of deep knowledge of mankind, but 
nevertheless she wished that “the right arm of the 
colony” might be with the boys to strike for them if 
need were. 

It was with no misgiving as to their own ability, 
but with the highest glee, that Giles and John made 
their preparations to set forth just before dawn. 

They kept their own counsel strictly and warned 
Constance not to talk. 

There was not much to be done to make ready, 
merely to see that the small boat, built by the boys 
for their own use, was tight, and to tuck out of sight 
under her bow seat a heavy coat in case the east wind 
— which the pilgrims had soon learned was likely to 
come in upon them sharply on the warmest day — 
blew up chillingly. 

John Billington owned, by his father’s reckless in- 
dulgence, a pistol that was his chief treasure; a heavy, 
clumsy thing, difficult to hold true, liable to do the 


A PIL/GRIM MAID 


93 

unexpected, the awkward progenitor of the pretty 
modern revolver, but a pistol for all its defects, and 
the apple of John’s eye. This he had named Bounc- 
ing Bully, invariably spoke of it as “he”, and felt to- 
ward it and treated it not merely as his arms, but as 
his companion in arms. 

Bouncing Bully was to make the third member of 
the party; he accompanied John, hidden with diffi- 
culty because of his bulk, in the breast of his coat, 
when he crept out without disturbing his father and 
Francis, to join Giles at the spot on the shore where 
their flat-bottomed row boat was pulled up. 

He found Giles awaiting him, watching the sands 
in a crude hour glass which he had himself con- 
structed. 

“I’ve been waiting an hour,” Giles said as John 
came up. “I know you are not late, but all the same 
here I have stood while this glass ran out, with ten 
minutes more since I turned it again.” 

“Well, I’m here now; take hold and run her out,” 
said John, seizing the boat’s bow and bracing to shove 
her. 

“Row out. I’ll row back,” commanded Giles as 
he and John swung over the side of the boat out of 
the waves into which they had waded. 

They did not talk as they advanced upon the May- 
flower which lay at anchor in the harbour. They had 
agreed upon boarding her with as little to announce 


A PILGRIM MAID 


94 

their coming as possible. As it chanced, there being 
no need of guarding against surprise, there was no one 
on deck when the boys made their boat fast to the 
ship’s cable, and clambered on deck — save one round- 
faced man who was swabbing the deck to the ac- 
companiment of his droning a song, tuneless outside 
his own conception of it. 

“Lord bless and save us but you dafted me, young 
masters!” this man exclaimed when Giles and John 
appeared; he leaned against the rail with the air of a 
fine lady, funny to see in one so stoutly stalwart. 

“I didna know ye at sight; now I see tis Master 
Giles and Master John Billington, whose pranks was 
hard on us crossing.” 

‘“You are not the man we want,” said Giles, haught- 
ily, trusting to assurance to win his end. “Fetch 
me that man who goes in and about the cabin at 
times, the one that stands well with Jones, the ship’s 
master.” 

This last was a gamble on chance, but Giles felt 
sure of his conclusions, that the captain was at the 
bottom of the loss of the papers, the actual thief his 
tool. 

“Aye, I know un,” said the man, nodding sagely, 
proud of his quickness. “’Tis George Heaton, I 
make no doubt. The captain gives him what is an- 
other, better man’s due. Master Jones gives him his 
ear and his favour. ’ Tis George, slick George, you 


A PILGRIM MAID 95 

want, of that I’m certain.” He nodded many times 
as he ended. 

“Likely thing,” agreed Giles. “Fetch him.” 

The deck cleaner departed in a heavy fashion, and 
returned shortly in company with a wiry, slender 
young man, having a handsome face, a quick roving 
eye, crafty, but clever. 

“Ah, George, do you remember me?” asked Giles. 
“Don’t dare to offer me your hand, my man, for I’d 
not touch it.” 

“I may be serving as a sailor, but I’m as good a 
gentleman born as you,” retorted Heaton, flushing 
angrily. 

“Decently born you may be; of that I know noth- 
ing. Pity is it that you have gone so far from your 
birthday,” said Giles. “But as good a gentleman as 
I am you are not, nor as anyone, as this honest fellow 
here. For blood or no blood, a thief is far from a 
gentleman.” 

George Heaton made a step forward with upraised 
fist, but Giles looked at him contemptuously, and did 
not fall back. 

“No play acting here. Give me the papers you 
stole out of my stepmother’s care, out of my little 
sister’s sleeping hammock, weeks agone,” said Giles, 
coolly. “Your game is up. For some reason the 
child did not tell us of your act till now; now she hath 
spoken. Fortunately the ship hath lingered for you 


A PILGRIM MAID 


96 

to be dealt with before she took you back to England. 
Hand over the papers, Heaton, if you ever hope to be 
nearer England than the arm of the tree from which 
you shall hang on the New England coast, unless you 
restore your booty.” 

Heaton looked into Giles’s angry eyes and quailed. 
The boy had grown up during the hard winter, and 
Heaton recognized his master; more than that, he had 
the cowardice that had made him the ready tool of 
Captain Jones — the cowardice of the man who lives by 
tricks, trusting them to carry him to success — who will 
not stand by his colours because he has no standard of 
loyalty. 

“I haven’t got your father’s papers, Giles Hop- 
kins,” he growled, dropping his eyes. 

“ You could have said much that I would not have 
believed, but that I believe,” said Giles. “Do you 
know what Master Jones did with them when you 
gave them over to him, you miserable cat’s paw?” 

“ How about giving the cat to the cat’s paw, Giles ? ” 
suggested John, grinning in huge enjoyment of 
George Heaton’s instant, sailor’s appreciation of his 
joke and the offices of “the cat” with which sailors 
were lashed in punishment. 

“I hope it will not be necessary. If Captain 
Standish comes with a picked number of our men to 
get these papers, there will be worse beasts than the 
cat let loose on the Mayflower. Lead me to the 


A PILGRIM MAID 


97 

captain, Heaton, and remember it will go hard with 
you if you let him lead you into denial of the crime you 
committed for him,” said Giles, with such a dignity 
as filled rollicking John, who wanted to turn the ad- 
venture into a frolic, with admiration for his comrade. 

“ Stand by you and Jones will deal with me. 
Stand by him and you threaten me with your men, 
led by that fighting Standish of yours. Between you 
where does George Heaton stand?” asked Heaton 
sullenly, turning, nevertheless, to do Giles’s bidding. 

“You should have thought of this before,” said 
Giles, coolly. “There never yet was wisdom and 
safety in rascality.” 

Captain Jones, whose connection with the pilgrims 
was no more than that he had been hired by them to 
bring them to the New World, was a man whose 
honesty many of his passengers mistrusted, but 
against whom, as against the captain of the Speed- 
well that had turned back, there was no proof. 

He was coming out of his cabin to his breakfast 
when Heaton brought the boys to him; he started 
visibly at the sight of Giles, but recovered himself 
instantly and greeted the lads affably. 

“Good morning, my erstwhile passengers and new 
colonists,” he said. “I have wondered that at least 
the younger members of your community did not 
visit the ship. Welcome!” He held out his hand, 
but neither Giles nor John seemed to see it. 


A PILGRIM MAID 


98 

“Master Jones,” said Giles, “there is no use wast- 
ing time and phrases. This man, at your orders, 
stole out of the women’s cabin on this ship the papers 
left by my father in his wife’s care. He has given 
them up to you. The story has only now — yesterday 
— come to our knowledge. Give me those papers.” 

“What right have you to accuse me, me, the 
master of this ship?” demanded Captain Jones, 
blustering. “Have a care that I don’t throw you 
overboard. Take your boat and be gone before harm 
comes to you!” 

“You would throw more than us overboard if you 
dared to touch us,” returned Giles. “Nor is it 
either of us to whom harm threatens. Come, Master 
Jones, those papers! My father, none of the colony, 
knows of your crime. What do you think will befall 
you when they do know it ? Hand us the papers, not 
one lacking, and we will let you go back to England 

free and safe. Refuse Well, it’s for you to choose, 

but I’d not hesitate in your place.” Giles shrugged 
his shoulders, half turning away, as if after all the 
result of his mission did not concern him. 

John saw a telepathic message exchanged between 
the captain and his tool. The question wordlessly 
asked Heaton whether the theft of the papers, their 
possession by the captain, actually was known, and 
Heaton’s eyes answering: “Yes!” 

Captain Jones swallowed hard, as if he were 


A PILGRIM MAID 99 

swallowing a great dose, as he surely was. After a 
moment’s thought he spoke: 

“See here, Giles Hopkins, I always liked you, and 
now I rather admire you for your courage in thus 
boarding my ship and bearding me. I admit that I 
hold the papers. But, as of course you can easily 
see, I am neither a thief nor a receiver of stolen goods. 
My reason for wanting those papers was no common 
one. I am willing to restore to you those which relate 
to your family inheritance, your father’s personal 
papers, but those which relate to Plymouth colony I 
want. I can use them to my advantage in England. 
Take this division of the documents and go back 
with my congratulations on your conduct.” 

“I would liefer your blame than your praise, sir,” 
said Giles, haughtily, in profound disgust with the 
man. “It needs no saying that my father would 
part with any private advantage sooner than with 
what had been entrusted to him. First and most I 
demand the Plymouth colony documents. Get the 
papers, not one lacking, and let me go ashore. The 
wide harbour’s winds are not strong enough for me to 
breathe on your ship. It sickens me.” 

Captain Jones gave the boy a malevolent look. 

“A virtue of necessity,” he muttered, turning to go. 

“And your sole virtue?” suggested Giles to his 
retreating back. 

Captain Jones was gone a long time. The boys 


IOO 


A PILGRIM MAID 


fumed with impatience and feared harm to the papers, 
but George Heaton grinned at them with the utmost 
cheerfulness. He had completely sloughed off all 
share in the theft and plainly enjoyed his superior’s 
discomfiture, being of that order of creatures whose 
malice revels in the mischances of others. 

It proved that the captain’s delay was due to his 
reluctance to comply with Giles’s demand. He came 
at last, slowly, bearing in his hand the packet en- 
veloped in oilskin which Giles remembered having 
seen in his father’s possession. 

“I must do your bidding, youngster,” he said 
angrily, “for you can harm me otherwise. But what 
guarantee have I, if I hand these papers to you, that 
you will keep the secret?” 

“I never said that the secret would be kept; I said 
that you should suffer no harm. An innocent person 
is accused of this theft; the truth must be known. 
But I can and do promise you that you shall not be 
molested; I can answer for that. As to guarantee, 
you know my father, you know the Plymouth 
pilgrims, you know me. Is there any doubt that we 
are honourable, conscientious, God-fearing, the sort 
that faithfully keep their word?” demanded Giles. 

“No. I grant you that. Take your packet,” 
said Captain Jones, yielding it. 

“By your leave I will examine it,” said Giles un- 
fastening its straps. 


A PILGRIM MAID 


IOI 


“Do you doubt me?” blustered the captain. 

“Not a whit,” laughed John with a great burst of 
mirth, before Giles could answer. 

“Why should we doubt you? Haven't you shown 
us exactly what you are?” 

Giles turned over the papers one by one. None 
was missing. He folded them and replaced them in 
their case, buckling its straps. 

“All the papers are here,” he said. “John, we’ll 
be off. This is our final visit to the Mayflower , 
Master Jones — unless I ship with you for England. 
Good voyage, as I hear they say in France. Hope 
you’ll catch a bit of Puritan conscience before you 
leave the harbour.” 

Captain Jones followed the boys to the side of the 
ship where they were to reembark in their rowboat. 
At every step he grew angrier, the veins swelled in his 
forehead which was only a shade less purple-red than 
his cheeks. His defeat was a sore thing, the dis- 
appointment of the plans which he had laid upon the 
possession of the stolen documents became more 
vividly realized with each moment, and the fact that 
two lads had thus conquered him and were going 
away with their prize infuriated him. 

Giles had swung himself down into the boat and 
was shipping the oars, but John halted for a moment 
in a stuffy corner to gloat over the captain’s em- 
purpled face and to dally with a temptation to add 


102 


A PILGRIM MAID 


picturesqueness to their departure. The temptation 
got the upper hand of him, though John usually held 
out both hands to mischief. 

He drew Bouncing Bully from his breast and 
levelled it. 

“Stop! Gunpowder !” screamed the captain, 
choking with fear and rage, and pointing at a small 
keg that stood hard by. 

“I won’t hit it,” John grinned, delightedly. “Let’s 
see how my gunpowder is.” With a flourish the 
mad boy fired a shot into the wall of the tiny cabin, 
regardless of the fact that the likely explosion of 
the keg of gunpowder would have blown up the 
Mayflower and him with her. 

The captain fell forward on his face, the men who 
were at work splicing ropes in the cubby-like cabin 
cowered speechless, their faces ashen. 

John whooped with joy and fled, leaping into the 
rowboat which he nearly upset. 

“What?” demanded Giles. “Who shot? Did he 
attack you, Jack ? ” 

“Who? No one attacked me. I shot. Zounds, 
they were scared! In that pocket of a cabin, with a 
keg of gunpowder sitting close,” chuckled John. 

“What in the name of all that’s sane did you do 
that for ?” cried Giles. “Scared! I should say with 
reason! Why, Jack Billington, you might be blown 
to bits by this time, ship, men, yourself, and all!” 


A PILGRIM MAID 103 

“I might be,” assented Jack, coolly. “I’m not. 
Giles, you should have seen your shipmaster Jones! 
Flat on his face and fair blubbering with fear and 
fury! He loves us not, my Giles! I doubt his days 
are dull on the Mayflower , so long at anchor. ’Twas 
but kind to stir up a lively moment. Here, give me 
an oar! Even though you said you would row back, 
I feel like helping you. Wait till I settle Bouncing 
Bully. He’s digging me in the ribs, to remind me of 
the joke we played ’em, I’ve no doubt; but he hurts. 
That’s better. Now for shore and your triumph, old 
Giles!” 


CHAPTER VIII 


Deep Love, Deep Wound 

C ONSTANCE had escaped from Humility 
Cooper and Elizabeth Tilley who had affec- 
tionately joined her when she had appeared on her 
way to the beach to await Giles’s return. 

Constance invented a question that must be asked 
Elder Brewster because she knew that the girls, 
though they revered him, feared him, and never 
willingly went where they must reply to his gravely 
kind attempts at conversation with them. “I 
surely feel like a wicked hypocrite,” sighed Con- 
stance, watching her friends away as she turned to- 
ward the house that sheltered the elder. 

“ What would dear little Humility say if she knew I 
had tried to get rid of her? Or Elizabeth either! 
But it isn’t as though I had not wanted them for a 
less good reason. I do love them dearly! I must 
meet Giles and hear his news as soon as I can, and 
it can’t be told before another. Mercy upon us, 
what was it that I had thought of to ask Elder Brew- 
ster! I’ve forgotten every syllable of it! Well, 
mercy upon us! And suppose he sees me hesitating 

104 


A PILGRIM MAID 


io 5 

here! I know! I’ll confess to him that I was wish- 
ing I was in Warwickshire hearing Eastertide 
alleluias sung in my cousins’ church, and ask him if 
it was sinful. He loves to correct me, dear old saint ! ” 

Dimpling with mischief Constance turned her 
head away from a possible onlooker in the house to 
pull her face down into the proper expression for a 
youthful seeker for guidance. Then, quite demure 
and serious, with downcast eyes, she turned and 
went into the house. 

Elder William Brewster kept her some time. She 
was nervously anxious to escape, fearing to miss the 
boys’ arrival. But Elder Brewster was deeply in- 
terested in pretty Constance Hopkins, in whom, in 
spite of her sweet docility and patient daily per- 
formance of her hard tasks, he discerned glimpses of 
girlish liveliness that made him anxious and which he 
felt must be corrected to bring the dear girl into 
perfection. 

Constance decided that she was expiating fully 
whatever fault there might have been in feigning an 
errand to Elder Brewster to get rid of the girls as she 
sat uneasily listening to that good man’s exposition 
of the value of alleluias in the heart above those sung 
in church, and the baseness of allowing the mind to 
look back for a moment at the “shackles from which 
she was freed.” Good Elder Brewster ended by 
reading from his roughened brown leather-covered 


io6 


A PILGRIM MAID 


Bible the story of Lot’s wife to which Constance — 
who had heard it many times, it being an appropriate 
theme for the pilgrim band to ponder, sick in heart 
and body as they had been so long — did not harken. 

At last she was dismissed with a fatherly hand laid 
on her shining head, and a last warning to keep in 
mind how favoured above her English cousins she 
had been to be chosen a daughter in Israel to help 
found a kingdom of righteousness. Constance ran 
like the wind down the road, stump-bordered, the 
begining of a street, and came down upon the beach 
just as the boys reached it and their boat bumped up 
on the sand under the last three hard pulls they had 
given the oars in unison. 

“Oh! Giles, oh, Giles, oh Jack! cried Constance 
fairly dancing under her excitement. 

“Oh, Con, oh, Con! Oh, Constantia!” mocked 
John, hauling away on the painter and getting the 
boat up to her tying stake. 

“What happened you? Have you news?” Con- 
stance implored them. 

“We heard no especial news, Con,” said Giles. 
“I’m not sure we asked for any. We have this 
instead; will that suffice you?” 

He took from his breast the packet of papers and 
offered it to her. 

“Oh, Giles!” sighed Constance, clasping her hands, 
tears of relief springing to her eyes “All of them? 


A PILGRIM MAID 


107 

Are they all safe? Thank Heaven!” she added as 
Giles nodded. 

‘‘Did you have trouble getting them? Who held 
them? Tell me everything!” 

“Give me a chance Constantia Chatter,” said 
Giles, using the name Constance had been dubbed 
when, a little tot, she ceaselessly used her new 
accomplishment of talking. “We had no trouble, no. 
We found the thief and made him confess what we 
already knew, that he was the master’s cat’s paw. 
Jones had to disgorge; he could not hold the papers 
without paying too heavy a penalty. So here they 
are. Why don’t you take them?” 

“I take them?” puzzled Constance, accepting 
them as Giles thrust them into her hand. “Do you 
want me to put them away for you? Are you not 
coming to dinner? There is not enough time to go 
to work before noon. The sun was not two hours 
from our noon mark beside the house when I left 
it.” 

“I suppose I am going to dinner,” said Giles. “I 
am ready enough for it. No, I don’t want you to 
put the papers away for me. You can do with them 
what you like. I should advise your giving them to 
Father, since they are his, but that is as you will. I 
give them into your hands.” 

“Giles, Giles!” cried Constance, in distress, in- 
stantly guessing that this meant that Giles was 


108 A PILGRIM MAID 

intending to hold aloof from a part in rejoicing over 
the recovery. 

“Give them to Father yourself. How proud of 
you he will be that you ferreted out the thief and 
went so bravely, with only John, to demand them 
for him! It is not my honour, and I must not 
take it.” 

“Oh, as to honour, you got the first clue from 
Damaris, if there’s honour in it, but for that I do not 
care. I did the errand when you sent me on it, or 
opened my way. However it came about I will not 
give the papers to my father. In no wise will I 
stoop to set myself right in his eyes. Perhaps he 
will say that the whole story is false, that I did not 
get the papers on the ship, but had them hidden till 
fear and an uneasy conscience made me deliver them 
up, and that you are shielding your brother,” said 
Giles, frowning as he turned from Constance. 

“And I thought now everything would be right!” 
groaned the girl — her lips quivering, tears running 
down her cheeks. “Giles, dear Giles; don’t, don’t be 
so bitter, so unforgiving! It is not just to Father, not 
just to yourself, to me. It isn’t right. Giles! Will 
you hold this grudge against the father you so loved, 
and forget all the years that went before, for a 
miserable day when he half harboured doubt of you, 
and that when he was torn by influence, tormented 
till he was hardly himself? ” 


A PILGRIM MAID 


109 

“Now, Constance, there is no need of your turning 
preacher,” Giles said, harshly. 

“If you like to swallow insult, well and good. It 
does not matter about a girl, but a man's honour is 
his chiefest possession. Take the papers, and prate 
no more to me. My father wanted them; there they 
are. He suspected me of stealing them; I found the 
thief. That's all there is about it. What is there 
to-day to eat? An early row makes a man hungry. 
Art ready, Jack? We will go to the house, by your 
leave, pretty Sis. Sorry to see your eyes reddening, 
but better that than other harm.” 

Constance hesitated as Giles went up the beach, 
taking John with him. For a moment she debated 
seeking Captain Standish, giving him the papers, and 
asking him to be intermediary between her father and 
this headstrong boy, who talked so largely of himself 
as “a man,” and behaved with such wrong-headed, 
childish obstinacy. But a second thought con- 
vinced her that she herself might serve Giles better 
than the captain, and she took her way after her 
brother, beginning to hope, true to herself, that her 
father’s pleasure in recovering the papers, his 
desire to make amends to Giles, would express itself 
in such wise that they would be drawn together 
closer than before the trouble arose. 

It was turning into a balmy day, after a chilly 
morning. Though only the middle of March the air 


no 


A PILGRIM MAID 


was full of spring. In the community house, as 
Constance entered, she found her stepmother, and 
Mrs. White — each with her Mayflower - born baby 
held in one arm — busily setting forth the dinner, 
while Priscilla and Humility and Elizabeth helped 
them, and the smaller children, headed by Damaris, 
attempted to help, were sharply rebuked for getting 
in the way, subsided, but quickly darted up again to 
take a dish, or hand a knife which their inconsistent 
elders found needed. 

Several men — Mr. Hopkins, Mr. White; Mr. 
Warren, whose wife had not yet come from England; 
Doctor Fuller, in like plight; John and Francis 
Billington’s father, John Alden and Captain Myles 
Standish, as a matter of course — were discussing 
planting of corn while awaiting the finishing touches 
to their carefully rationed noonday meal. 

“ If you follow my counsel,” the captain was saying, 
“you will plant over the spot where we have laid so 
many of our company. Thus far we hardly are 
aware of our savage neighbours, but with the warm 
weather they will come forth from their woodlands, 
and who knows what may befall us from them? 
Better, say I, conceal from them that no more than 
half of those who sailed hither are here to-day. 
Better hide from their eyes beneath the tall maize 
the graves on yonder hillside.” 

“Well said, good counsel, Captain Myles,” said 


Ill 


A PILGRIM MAID 

Stephen Hopkins. “God’s acre, the folk of parts of 
Europe call the enclosure of their dead. We will 
make our acre God’s acre, planting it doubly for our 
protection, in grain for our winter need, concealment 
of our devastation.” 

Suddenly the air was rent with a piercing shriek, 
and little Love Brewster, the Elder’s seven-year-old 
son, came tumbling into the house, shaking and 
inarticulate with terror. 

Priscilla Mullins caught him into her lap and tried 
to sooth him and discover the cause of his fright, but 
he only waved his little hands frantically and sobbed 
beyond all possibility of guessing what words were 
smothered beneath the sobs. 

“Elder Brewster promised to let the child pass the 
afternoon with Damaris,” began Mrs. Hopkins, but 
before she got farther John Alden started up. 

“Look there,” he said. “Is it wonderful that 
Love finds the sight beyond him ? ” 

Stalking toward the house in all the awful splen- 
dour of paint, feathers, beads, and gaudy blanket came 
a tall savage. He had, of course, seen the child and 
realized his fright and that he had run to alarm the 
pilgrims, but not a whit did it alter the steady pace 
at which he advanced, looking neither to left nor to 
right, his arms folded upon his breast, no sign ap- 
parent of whether he came in friendship or in enmity. 

The first instinct of the colonists, in this first en- 


1 1 2 


A PILGRIM MAID 


counter with an Indian near to the settlement was to 
be prepared in case he came in enmity. 

Several of the men reached for the guns which hung 
ready on the walls, and took them down, examining 
their horns and rods as they handled them. But the 
savage, standing in the doorway, made a gesture full 
of calm dignity which the pilgrims rightly construed 
to mean salutation, and uttered a throaty sound that 
plainly had the same import. 

“Welcome!” hazarded Myles Standish advancing 
with outstretched hand upon the new-comer, uncer- 
tain how to begin his acquaintance, but hoping this 
might be pleasing. “Yes,” said the Indian in Eng- 
lish, to the boundless surprise of the Englishmen. 
“Yes, welcome, friend!” He took Captain Stand- 
ish’s hand. 

“Chief?” he asked. “Samoset,” he added, touch- 
ing his own breast, and thus introducing himself. 

“How in the name of all that is wonderful did he 
learn English!” cried Stephen Hopkins. 

“Yes, Samoset know,” the Indian turned upon him, 
understanding. “White men ships fish far, far sun- 
rise,” he pointed eastward, and they knew that he was 
telling them that English fishermen had been known 
to him, whose fishing grounds lay toward the east. 

“’Tis true; our men have been far east and north 
of here,” said Myles Standish, turning toward 
Stephen Hopkins, as to one who had travelled. 


A PILGRIM MAID 


ii3 

“Humphrey Gilbert, but many since then,” 
nodded Mr. Hopkins. 

“Big chief Squanto been home long time white 
men, he talk more Samoset,” said Samoset. 

“ Squanto come see . ” He waved his hand com- 

prehendingly over his audience, to indicate whom 
Squanto intended to visit. 

“Well, womenfolk, you must find something 
better than you give us, and set it forth for our 
guest,” said Stephen Hopkins. “Get out our Eng- 
lish beer; Captain Myles I’ll undertake, will join me 
in foregoing our portion to-morrow for him. And 
the preserved fruits; Im certain he will find them a 
novelty. And you must draw on our store of 
trinkets for gifts. Lads — Giles, John, Francis — help 
the girls open the chest and make selection.” 

Samoset betrayed no understanding of these 
English words, maintaining a stolid indifference while 
preparations for his entertainment went on. But he 
did full justice to the best that the colonists had to set 
before him and accepted their subsequent gifts with 
a fine air of noble condescension, as a monarch ac- 
cepting tribute. 

Later with pipes filled with the refreshing weed 
from Virginia, which had circuitously found its way 
back to the New World, via England, the Plymouth 
men sat down to talk to Samoset. 

Limited as was his vocabulary, broken as was his 


A PILGRIM MAID 


114 

speech, yet they managed to understand much of 
what he told them, valuable information relating to 
their Indian neighbours near by, to the state of the 
country, to climate and soil, and to the people of the 
forests farther north. 

Samoset went away bearing his gifts, with which, 
penetrating his reserve, the colonists saw that he was 
greatly pleased. He promised a speedy return, and 
to bring to them Squanto, from whose friendship and 
better knowledge of their speech and race evidently 
Samoset thought they would gain much. 

The younger men — Doctor Fuller, John Alden and 
others, needless to say Giles, John, and Francis Bill- 
ington, under the conduct of Myles Standish — ac- 
companied Samoset for a few miles on his return. 

The sun was dropping westward, the night promis- 
ing to be as warmly kind as the day had been, and 
Constance slipped her hand into her father’s arm as 
he stood watching their important guest’s departure, 
under his escort’s guardianship. 

“A little tiny walk with me, Father dear?” she 
hinted. “I like to watch the sunset redden the 
sands, and it is so warm and fine. Besides, I have 
something most beautiful to tell you!” 

“Good news, Con? This seems to be a day of 
good things,” said her father, as Constance nodded 
hard. “The coming of yonder Indian seems to me 
the happiest thing that could well have befallen us. 


A PILGRIM MAID 


ii5 

Given the friendship of our neighbouring tribes we 
have little to fear from more distant ones, and the 
great threat to our colony’s continuance is removed. 
Well, I will walk with you child, but not far nor long. 
There is scant time for dalliance in our lives, you 
know.” 

They went out, Constance first running to snatch 
her cloak and pull its deep hood over her hair as a 
precaution against a cold that the warm day might 
betray her into, and which she had good reason to 
fear who had helped nurse the victims of the first 
months of the immigration. 

“The good news, Daughter?” hinted Mr. Hopkins 
after they had walked a short distance in silence. 

Constance laughed triumphantly, giving his arm a 
little shake. “I waited to see if you wouldn’t ask!” 
she cried, “I knew you were just as curious, you 
men, as we poor women creatures — but of course in a 
big, manly way!” She pursed her lips and shook 
her head, lightly pinching her father to point her 
satire. 

“Have a care, Mistress Constantia!” her father 
warned her. “Curiosity is a weakness, even danger- 
ous, but disrespect to your elders and betters, what 
is that?” 

“Great fun,” retorted Constance. 

Her father laughed. He found his girl’s play- 
fulness, which she was recovering with the springtide 


n6 


A PILGRIM MAID 


and the relief from the heavy sorrow of the first weeks 
in Plymouth, refreshing amid the extreme seriousness 
of most of the people around him. “Proceed with 
your tidings, you saucy minx!” he said. 

“Very well then, Mr. Stephen Hopkins,” Con- 
stance obeyed him, “what would you say if I were to 
tell you that there was news of your missing packet of 
papers?” 

Stephen Hopkins stopped short. “I should say 
thank God with all my heart, Constance, not merely 
because the loss was serious, but most of all because 
of Giles. Is it true?” he asked. 

“They are found!” cried Constance, jubilantly, 
“and it was Giles himself who faced the thief and 
forced him to give them up. It is a fine tale!” 
And she proceeded to tell it. 

Her father’s relief, his pleasure, was evidently 
great, but to Constance’s alarm as the story ended, 
his face settled into an expression of annoyance. 

“It is indeed good news, Constance, and I am grate- 
ful, relieved by it,” he said, having heard her to the 
end. “But why did not Giles tell me this himself, 
bring me the recovered packet? Would it not be 
natural to wish to confer upon me, himself, the 
happiness he had won for me, to hasten to me with 
his victory, still more that it clears him of the least 
doubt of complicity in the loss?” 

“Ah, no, Father! That is just the point of his not 



Look there,’ said John Alden 








































■ 




















A PILGRIM MAID 


ii 7 

doing so!” cried Constance. “Giles is sore at heart 
that you felt there might be a doubt of him. He can- 
not endure it, nor seem to bring you proofs of his 
innocence. I suppose he does not feel like a boy, 
but like a man whose honour is questioned, and by — 
forgive me, Father, but I must make it clear — by one 
whose trust in him should be stronger than any 
other’s.” 

“Nonsense, Constantia!” Stephen Hopkins ex- 
ploded, angrily. “What are we coming to if we can- 
not question our own children? Giles is not a man; 
he is a boy, and my boy, so I shall expect him to 
render me an account of his actions whenever, and 
however I demand it. I’ll not stand for his pride, 
his assumption of injured dignity. Let him re- 
member that! Thank God my son is an honest lad, 
as by all reason he should be. But though he is 
right as to the theft, he is wrong in his arrogance, 
and pride is as deadly a sin as stealing. I want no 
more of this nonsense.” 

“Oh, Father dear,” cried Constance, wringing her 
hands with her peculiar gesture when matters got too 
difficult for those small hands. “Please, please be 
kind to Giles! Oh, I thought everything would be 
all right now that the packet was recovered, and by 
him ! Be patient with him, I beg you. He is not one 
that can be driven, but rather won by love to do your 
will. If you will convey to him that you regret hav- 


1 1 8 A PILGRIM MAID 

ing suspected him he will at once come back to be our 
own Giles. ” 

“Have a care, Constantia, that in your anxiety for 
your brother you do not fall into a share of his fault ! ” 
warned her father. “It is not for you to advise me 
in my dealing with my son. As to trying to placate 
him by anything like an apology: preposterous 
suggestion! That is not the way of discipline, my 
girl! Let Giles indicate to me his proper humility, 
his regret for taking the attitude that I am not in 
authority over him, free to demand of him any ex- 
planation, any evidence of his character I please. 
No, no, Constance! You mean well, but you are 
wrong.” 

Thus saying, Mr. Hopkins turned on his heel to go 
back to the house, and Constance followed, no longer 
with her hand on her father’s arm, but understanding 
the strong annoyance he felt toward Giles, and pain- 
fully conscious that her pleading for her brother had 
done less than no good. 


CHAPTER IX 


Seedtime of the First Spring 



ILES HOPKINS and John and Francis Billing- 


VJ ton slept in the new house, now nearly finished, 
on Leyden Street. Therefore it happened that Ste- 
phen Hopkins did not see his son until the morning 
after the recovery of the papers. 

“Well, Giles,” said his father, with a smile that Giles 
took to be mocking, but in which the father’s hidden 
gratification really strove to escape, “so you played 
a man’s part with the Mayflower captain, at the same 
time proving yourself? I am glad to get my papers, 
boy, and glad that you have shown that you had no 
share in their loss, but only in their return. Hence- 
forth be somewhat less insolent when appearances are 
against you; still better take care that appearances, 
facts as well, are in your favour.” 

“Appearances are in the eye of the on-looker,” 
said Giles, drawing himself up and flushing angrily, 
though, had he but seen it, love and pride in him shone 
in his father’s eyes, though his tone and words were 
careless, gruff indeed. 

“If Dame Eliza is to be the glass through which 


120 


A PILGRIM MAID 


you view me, then it matters not what course I 
follow, for you will not see it straight. Nor do I care 
to act to the end that you may not suspect me of 
being fit for hanging. A gentleman's honour needs 
no proving, or else is proved by his sword. And 
whatever you think of me, I can never defend myself 
thus against my father. A father may insult his son 
with impunity/’ 

“But a boy may not speak insultingly to his father 
with impunity, Master Giles Hopkins,” said Stephen 
Hopkins, advancing close to the lad with his quick 
temper afire. “One word more of such nature as I 
just heard and I will have you publicly flogged, as you 
richly deserve, and as our community would ap- 
plaud.” 

Giles bowed, his face as angry as his father’s, and 
passed on cutting the young sprouts along the road 
with a stick he carried. And thus the two burning 
hearts which loved each other — too similar to make 
allowances for each other when the way was open to 
their reconciliation — were further estranged than be- 
fore. 

In the meantime Constance, Priscilla, and the 
younger girls, were starting out, tools in hand, baskets 
swinging on their arms, to prepare the first garden 
of the colony. 

“Thank — I mean I rejoice that we are not sent to 
work amid the graves on the hillside,” said Priscilla, 


A PILGRIM MAID 


121 


altering her form of expression to conform with the 
prescribed sobriety. 

“Oh, that is to be planted with the Indian corn, 
you know/’ said Constance. “It grows high, and 
will hide our graves. Why think of that, Prissy? 
I want to be happy.” She began to hum a quaint 
air of her own making. She had by inheritance the 
gift of music, as the kindred gift of love and taste for 
all beauty, a gift that should never find expression in 
her new surroundings. 

Presently she found words for her small tune and 
sang them, swinging her basket in time with her 
singing and also swinging Humility Cooper’s hand as 
she walked, not without some danger of dropping into 
a sort of dance step. 

This is what she sang: 

Over seas lies England; 

Still we find this wing-land; 

Birds and bees and butterflies flit about us here. 

Eastward lies our Mother, 

Loved as is no other, 

Yet here flowers blossom with the springing year. 

We will plant a garden, 

Eve-like, as the warden 
Of the hope of men unborn, future of the race; 

Tears that we were weeping, 

Watering our keeping, 

Till we make the New World joy’s own dwelling place. 


122 


A PILGRIM MAID 


Priscilla Mullins stopped short and looked with 
amazement on her younger companion. 

“Did you make that song, Constance?” she de- 
manded, being used to the rhyming which Constance 
made to entertain the little ones. 

“It made itself, Pris,” laughed Constance. 

“Well, Pm no judge of songs, and as to rhyming I 
could match cat and rat if it was put to me to do, 
but no more. Yet it seemeth me that is a pretty 
song, with exactly the truth for its burden, and it 
trippeth as sweetly as the robin whistles. Do you 
know, Constance, it seems to me to run more into 
smooth cadences than the Metrical Psalms them- 
selves!” Priscilla dropped her voice as she said this, 
as if she hoped to be unheard by the vengeance which 
might swoop down on her. 

Constance’s laugh rang out merrily, quite un- 
afraid. 

“Oh, dear Prissy, the Metrical Version was not 
meant to run in smooth cadences!” she cried. “Do 
you see why we should not sing as the robin whistles, 
being young and God’s creatures, surely not less than 
the birds? Priscilla Mullins, there is John Alden 
awaiting us in the very spot where we are to work! 
How did he happen there, when no other man is 
about?” 

“He spoke to me of helping us with the first heavy 
turning of the soil,” said Priscilla, exceedingly red and 


A PILGRIM MAID 


123 


uncomfortable, but constrained to be truthful. “Oh, 
Constance, never look at me like that! Can I help 
it that Master Alden is so considerate of us?” 

“Sure-ly not!” declared Constance emphatically. 
“What about his returning home, Pris? He was 
hired but as cooper for the voyage, and would return. 
Will he go, think you?” 

“He seems not fully decided. He said somewhat 
to me of staying.” Poor Priscilla looked more than 
miserable as she said this, yet was forced to laugh. 

“I will speak to my father and Captain Standish 
to get them to offer him work a-plenty this summer, 
so mayhap they can persuade him to let the May- 
flower sail without him — next week she goes. Or 
perhaps you could bring arguments to bear upon him, 
Priscilla! He never seems stiff-necked, nor un- 
biddable.” Constance said this with a great effect of 
innocence, as if a new thought had struck her, and 
Priscilla had barely time to murmur: 

“Thou art a sad tease, Constance,” before they 
came up with John Alden, who looked as embarrassed 
as Priscilla when he met Constance’s dancing eyes. 

Nevertheless it was not long before John Alden and 
Priscilla Mullins were working together at a little 
distance apart from the rest, leaving Constance to 
dig and rake in company with Humility Cooper, 
Elizabeth Tilley, and the little girls. Thus at work 
they saw approaching from the end of the road that 


124 


A PILGRIM MAID 


was lost in the woods beyond a small but imposing 
procession of tall figures, wrapped in gaudy colored 
blankets, their heads surmounted with banded 
feathers which streamed down their backs, softly 
waving in the light breeze. 

“Oh, dear, oh, dear, Connie, they are savages!” 
whispered Damaris looking about as if wishing that 
a hole had been dug big enough to hide her instead 
of the small peas which she was planting. 

“But they are friendly savages, small sister,” 
said Constance. “See, they carry no bows and 
arrows. Do you know, girls, I believe this is the 
great chief Massasoit, of whom Samoset spoke, 
promising us his visit soon, and that with him may be 
Squanto, the Indian who speaks English ! Don’t you 
think we may be allowed to postpone the rest of the 
work to see the great conference which will take place 
if this is Massasoit?” 

“Indeed, Constance, my back calls me to cease 
louder than any savage,” said Humility, her hand on 
her waist, twisting her small body from side to side. 
“I have been wishing we might dare stop, but I 
couldn’t bring myself to say so.” 

“You have not recovered strength for this bending 
and straining work, my dear,” said Constance in her 
grandmotherly way. “Priscilla, Priscilla! John 
Alden, see!” she called, and the distant pair faced her 
with a visible start. 


A PILGRIM MAID 


125 

She pointed to the savages, and Priscilla and 
John hastened to her, thinking her afraid. 

“Do you suppose it may be Massasoit and 
Squanto?” Constance asked at once. 

“Let us hope so,” said John Alden, looking with 
eager interest at the Indians. “We hope to make a 
treaty with Massasoit.” 

“Before you sail?” inquired Constance, guile- 
lessly. 

“Why, I am decided to cast my lot in with the 
colony, sweet Constance,” said John, trying, but 
failing, to keep from looking at Priscilla. 

“Pris?” cried Constance, and waited. 

Priscilla threw her arms around Constance and hid 
her face, crying on her shoulder. 

“My people are all dead, Connie, and I alone sur- 
vive of us all on the Mayflower! Even my brother 
Joseph died; you know it, Connie! Do you blame 
me?” she sobbed. 

“Oh, Prissy, dear Prissy!” Constance laughed at 
this piteous appeal. “Just as though you did not 
find John Alden most likeable when we were sailing 
and no one had yet died! And just as though you 
had to explain liking him! As though we did not all 
hold him dear and long to keep him with us! John 
Alden, I never, never would sit quiet under such 
insult! You funny Priscilla! What are you crying 
for? Aren’t you happy? tell me that!” 


126 


A PILGRIM MAID 


“So happy I must cry,” sobbed Priscilla, but 
drying her eyes nevertheless. “Do you suppose 
those savages see me?” 

“I am sure of it,” declared Constance. “Likely 
they will refuse to make a treaty with white men 
whose women act so strangely! My father is going 
to be as glad of your treaty with Priscilla as of the 
savage chiefs treaty, an it be made, Master Alden.” 

“What is it? What’s to do, dear John Alden?” 
clamoured Damaris, who never spoke to John with- 
out the caressing epithet. 

The young man swung her to his shoulder, and 
kissed the soil-stained hand which the child laid 
against his cheek. 

“I shall marry Priscilla and stay in Plymouth, 
not go back to England at all ! Does that please you, 
little maid?” he cried, gaily. 

Damaris scowled at him, weighing the case. 

“If you like me best,” she said doubtfully. 

“Of a certainty!” affirmed John Alden, for once 
disregarding scruples. “Could I swing up Priscilla 
on my shoulder like this, I ask you? Why, she’s not 
even a little girl!” 

And confiding little Damaris was satisfied. 

By this time the band of savages had advanced to 
the point of the road nearest to where the girls and 
John Alden were working. 

“We must go to greet them lest they find us remiss. 


A PILGRIM MAID 


12 7 

We do not know the workings of their minds,” 
said John Alden, striding down toward them, followed 
by the somewhat timorous group of grown and little 
girls, Damaris clinging to him, with one hand on 
Constance, in fearful enjoyment of the wonderful 
sight. 

“Welcome!” said John Alden, coming across the 
undergrowth to where the savages awaited him. 
“If you come in friendship, as I see you do, welcome, 
my brothers.” 

“Welcome,” said an Indian, stepping somewhat in 
advance. “We come in friendship. I am Squanto 
who know your race. I have been in England; 
I have seen the king. I am bring you friendship. 
This is Massasoit, the great chief. You are not the 
great white chief. He is old a little. Take us 
there.” 

“Gladly will I take you to our governor, who is, as 
you say, much older than I, and to our war chief, 
Myles Standish, and to the elders of our nation,” 
said John Alden. “Follow me. You are most wel- 
come, Massasoit, and Squanto, who can speak our 
tongue.” 

The singular company, the girls in their deep 
bonnets to shade them from the sun, the Indians 
in their paint and gay nodding feathers, the children 
divided between keen enjoyment of the novelty and 
equally keen fear of what might happen next, with 


128 


A PILGRIM MAID 


John Alden the only white man, came down into 
Plymouth settlement, not yet so built up as to sug- 
gest the name. 

Governor Carver was busied with William Brad- 
ford over the records of the colony, from which they 
were making extracts to dispatch to England in the 
near sailing of the Mayflower. John Alden turned 
to Elizabeth Tilley. 

“Run on, little maid, and tell the governor and 
elders whom we bring,” he said. 

Elizabeth darted into the house, earning a frown 
from the governor for her lack of manners, but in- 
stantly forgiven when she cried : 

“John Alden and we who were working in the 
field are bringing Your Excellency the Indian chief 
Massasoit, and Squanto, who talks to us in English 
wonderful to hear, when you look at his feathers and 
painted face! And John Alden sent me on to tell 
you. And, there are other Indians with them. 
And, oh, Governor Carver, shall I tell the women in 
the community house to cook meat for their dinner, 
or shall it be just our common dinner of porridge 
with, maybe, a smoked herring to sharpen us? For 
this the governor should order, should not he?” 

Governor Carver and William Bradford smiled. 
As a rule the younger members of the community 
over which these elder, grave men were set, feared 
them too much to say anything at which they could 


A PILGRIM MAID 


129 

smile, but the greatness of this occasion swept 
Elizabeth beyond herself. 

“I think, Mistress Elizabeth Tilley, that the 
matrons will not need the governor’s counsel as to the 
feeding of our guests,” said Governor Carver kindly. 
“Tell Constantia Hopkins to bid her father hither at 
his earliest convenience. I shall ask him to make the 
treaty with Massasoit, together with Edward Wins- 
low, if it be question of a treaty, as I hope.” 

Elizabeth sped back and met the approaching 
guests. She dropped a frightened curtsy, not know- 
ing the etiquette of meeting a band of friendly 
savages. But as they paid no attention to her, her 
manners did not matter, and realizing this with relief 
she joined Constance at the rear of the procession 
and delivered her message. 

“Porridge indeed!” exclaimed Mistress Hopkins 
when Elizabeth Tilley repeated to her the governor’s 
comment on her own suggestion as to the dinner for 
the Indian guests. “Porridge is well enough for us, 
but we will set the savages down to no such fare, but 
to our best, lest they fall to and eat us all some night 
in the dark of the moon, when we are asleep and un- 
protected! Little I thought I should be cooking for 
wild red men in an American forest when I learned to 
make sausage in my father’s house! But learn I 
did, and to make it fit for the king, so it should please 
the savages, though what they like is beyond my 


130 


A PILGRIM MAID 


knowledge. Sausage shall they have, and whether or 
no they will take to griddle cakes I dare not say, but 
it’s my opinion that men are men, civilized or wild, 
and never a man did I see that was not as keen set on 
griddle cakes as a fox on a chicken roost. It will be 
our part to feed these savages well, for, as I say, men 
are men, wild or English, and if you would have a 
man deal well by you make your terms after he hath 
well eaten. Thus may your father and Elder 
Brewster get a good treaty from these painted 
creatures. Get out the flour, Constantia, and stir 
up the batter. Humility and Elizabeth, fetch the 
jar of griddle fat. Priscilla Mullins, what aileth 
thee ? Art sleep-walking ? Call a boy to fetch wood 
for the hearth, and fill the kettle. Are you John-a- 
Dreams, and is this the time for dreaming ?” 

“It’s John-aream at least, is it not, Prissy?” 
whispered Constance, pinching the girl lightly as she 
passed her on her way to do her share of her step- 
mother’s bidding. 

Later Constance went to summon the guests to the 
community house for their dinner. They came 
majestically, escorted by the governor, Elder Brevr- 
ster, William Bradford, Stephen Hopkins, the weighty 
men of the colony, with Captain Standish in advance, 
representing the power of might. What the Indians 
thought of these Englishmen no one could tell; 
certainly they were not less appreciative of the 


A PILGRIM MAID 


131 

counsel of the wise than of the force of arms, having 
reliance on their own part upon their medicine men 
and soothsayers. 

What they thought of the white women’s cooking 
was soon perfectly apparent. It kept the women 
busy to serve them with cakes, to hold the glowing 
coals on the hearth at the right degree to keep the 
griddle heated to the point of perfect browning, never 
passing it to the burning point. The Indians 
devoured the cakes like a band of hungry boys, and 
Mistress Hopkins’s boasted sausage was never better 
appreciated on an English farm table than here. 

The young girls served the guests, which the 
Indians accepted as the natural thing, being used to 
taking the first place with squaws, both young and old. 

The homebrewed beer which had come across 
seas in casks abundantly, also met with ultimate 
approval, though at first taste two or three of the 
Indians nearly betrayed aversion to its bitterness. 
There were “strong waters” too, made riper by long 
tossing in the Mayflower s hold, which needed no 
persuading of the Indians’ palates. 

After the guests had dined Giles, John, Francis, 
and the other older boys, came trooping to the 
community house for their dinner. 

When they discovered that Squanto spoke English 
fairly well they were agog to hear from him the 
many things that he could tell them. 


i3 2 


A PILGRIM MAID 


‘‘Stay with us; they do not need you/’ they im- 
plored, but Squanto, mindful of his duties as inter- 
preter, reluctantly left them presently. Massasoit 
and his other companions returned with the white 
men to the conclave house, which was the governor’s 
and Elder Brewster’s home. 

“I go but wish I might stay a little hour,” said 
Squanto. He won Mistress Eliza’s heart, with 
Mistress White’s, by his evident friendliness and 
desire to stay with them. 

After this Damaris and the children could not fear 
him, and thus at his first introduction, Squanto, who 
was to become the friend and reliance of the colony, 
became what is even more, the friend of the little 
children. 


CHAPTER X 


Treaties 

T HE girls of the plantation were gathered to- 
gether in Stephen Hopkins's house. The logs on 
the hearth were ash-strewn to check their burning 
yet to hold them ready to burn when the hour for 
preparing supper was come and the ashes raked 
away. 

Dame Eliza Hopkins had betaken herself to 
William Bradford's house, the baby, Oceanus, 
seated astride her hip in her favourite manner of 
carrying him; she protested that she could not endure 
the gabble of the girls, but in truth she greatly 
desired to discuss with Mistress Bradford, of whom 
she stood somewhat in awe, the events portending. 
She was secretly elated with her husband’s coming 
honour, and wanted to convey to Mistress Bradford 
that, as between their two spouses, Stephen Hopkins 
was the better man. 

Constance, sitting beside the smothered hearth 
fire, might be considered, since it was at her father's 
hearthstone the girls were gathered, as the hostess of 
the occasion, but the gathering was for work, not 


133 


A PILGRIM MAID 


134 

formalities, and, in any case, Constance was too 
preoccupied with her task to pay attention to aught 
else. 

Only the older girls were bidden, but little Damaris 
was there by right of tenancy. She sat at Con- 
stance’s feet, worshipping her, as she turned and 
twisted their father’s coat, skilfully furbishing it with 
new buttons and new binding. 

“May Mr. Hopkins wear velvet, Constance?” 
asked Humility Cooper, suddenly; she too had been 
watching Constance work. “Did not Elder Brew- 
ster exhort us to utmost plainness of clothing, as 
becomes the saints, who set more store upon heavenly 
raiment than earthly splendour?” 

Constance looked up laughingly, pushing out of 
her eyes her waving locks which had strayed from her 
cap; she used the back of the hand that held her 
needle, pulled at great length through a button which 
she was fastening upon her father’s worn velvet coat. 

“Oh, Humility, splendour?” she laughed. “When 
I am trying hard to make this old coat passing 
decent ? Isn’t it necessary for us all to wear what we 
have, willy-nilly, since nothing else is obtainable, 
garments not yet growing on New World bushes? 
I do believe that some of the brethren discussed 
Stephen Hopkins’s velvet coat, and decided for it, 
since it stood for economy. It stood for more; till a 
ship brings supplies from home, it’s this, or no coat 


A PILGRIM MAID 


135 

for my father. But since he has been selected, with 
Mr. Edward Winslow, to make the treaty with 
Massasoit, he should be clad suitably to his office, 
were there choice between velvet and homespun.” 

“What does he make to treat Mass o’ suet, Con- 
stance? What is Mass o’ suet; pudding, Con- 
stance?” asked Damaris, anxiously, knitting her 
brow. 

Constance’s laugh rang out, good to hear. She 
leaned forward impetuously and snatched off her 
little sister’s decorous cap, rumpled her sleek fair 
hair with both hands pressing her head, and kissed 
her. Priscilla Mullins laughed with Constance, 
looking sympathetically at her, but some of the other 
girls looked a trifle shocked at this demonstration. 

“Massasoit is a great Indian chief, small lass; he 
is coming in a day or so, and Father and Mr. Winslow 
will make a treaty with him; that means that Massa- 
soit will promise to be our friend and to protect us 
from other Indian tribes, he and his Indians, while 
we shall promise to be true friends to him. It is a 
great good to our colony, and we are proud, you and 
I — and I think your mother, too” — Constance 
glanced with amusement at Priscilla — “that our 
father is chosen for the colony’s representative.” 
“Do you suppose that the Indians know whether 
cloth or velvet is grander? Those we see like 
leather and paint and feathers,” said Priscilla. “I 


136 A PILGRIM MAID 

hold that our men should overawe the savages, 
but ” 

“And I hold that brides should be bonny, let it be 
here, or in England,” Constance interrupted her. 
“What will you wear on the day of days, Priscilla, 
you darling?” 

“Well, I have consulted with Mistress Brewster,” 
admitted Priscilla, regretfully. “I did think, being 
a woman, she would know better how a young maid 
feeleth as to her bridal gown than her godly husband. 
But she saith that it is least of all becoming on such 
a solemn occasion to let my mind consider my out- 
ward seeming. So I have that excellent wool skirt 
that Mistress White dyed for me a good brown, and 
that with my blue body ” 

“Blue fiddlesticks, Priscilla Mullins!” Constance 
again interrupted her, impatiently. “You’ll wear 
nothing of the kind. I tell you it shall be white for 
you on your wedding day, with your comely face and 
your honest eyes shining over it! I have a sweet 
embroidered muslin, and I can fashion it for you with 
a little cleverness and a deep frill combined, for that 
you are taller than I, and more plump to take up its 
length, there’s no denying, Prissy dear! We’ll not 
stand by and see our plantation’s one real romance 
end in dyed brown cloth and dreariness, will we, 
girls?” 

“No!” cried Humility Cooper who would have 


A PILGRIM MAID 


137 

followed Constance’s lead into worse danger than a 
pretty wedding gown for Priscilla. 

But Elizabeth Tilley, her cousin, looked doubtful. 
“It sounds nice,” she admitted, “but I never can 
tell what is wrong and what is right, because, though 
we read our Bibles to learn our duty, the Bible does 
not condemn pleasure, and our teachers do. So it 
might be safer to wear dull garments when we are 
married, Constance, and not be light-minded.” 

“You mean light-bodied; light-coloured bodies, 
Betsy!” Constance laughed at her, with a glint of 
mischievous appreciation of Elizabeth’s unconscious 
humour that was like her father. “No, indeed, my 
sister pilgrim. A snowy gown for Pris, though I 
fashion it, who am not too skilful. Oh, Francis 
Billington, how you scared me!” she cried, jumping 
to her feet and upsetting Damaris who leaned upon 
her, as Francis Billington burst into the room, out of 
breath, but full of importance. 

“Nothing to fear with me about, girls,” he assured 
the roomful. “But great news! Massasoit has 
come, marched in upon us before we expected him, 
and the treaty is to be made to-morrow. Squanto is 

as proud and delighted as ” 

Squanto himself appeared in the doorway at that 
moment, a smile mantling his high cheek bones and a 
gleam in his eyes that betrayed the importance that 
his pride tried to conceal. 


A PILGRIM MAID 


138 

“ Chief come, English girls,” he announced. “No 
more you be fear Indian; Massasoit tell you be no 
more fear, he and Squanto fight for you, and he say 
true. No more fear, little English girl!” he laid his 
hand protectingly upon Damaris’s head and the child 
smiled up at him, confidingly. 

Giles came fast upon Squanto’s heels. His face 
was flushed, his eyes kindled; Constance saw with a 
leap of her heart that he looked like the lad she 
had loved in England and had lost in the New 
World. 

“Got Father’s coat ready, Con?” he asked. 
“There’s to be a counsel held, and my father is to 
preside over it on our side, arranging with Massasoit. 
My father is to settle with him for the colony — of 
course Mr. Winslow will have his say, also.” 

“I meant to furbish the coat somewhat more, 
Giles, but the necessary repairs are made,” said 
Constance yielding her brother the garment. “How 
proud of Father he is!” she thought, happily. “How 
truly he adores him, however awry matters go be- 
tween them!” 

Giles hung the coat on his arm, carefully, to keep 
it from wrinkles, a most unusual thoughtfulness in 
him, and hastened away. 

“No more work to-day, girls, or at least of this 
sort,” cried Constance gaily, her heart lightened by 
Giles’s unmistakable pride in their father. “We 


A PILGRIM MAID 


i39 

shall be called upon to cook and serve. Many Indians 
come with Massasoit, Squanto?” 

“No, his chiefs/’ Squanto raised one hand and 
touched its fingers separately, then did the same with 
the other hand. “Ten,” he announced after this 
illustration. 

“That means no less than thirty potatoes, and 
something less than twenty quarts of porridge,” 
laughed Constance, but was called to account by her 
stepmother, who had come in from the rear. 

“Will you never speak the truth soberly, Con- 
stantia Hopkins?” she said. “We do not count on 
two quarts of porridge for every Indian we feed. 
Take this child; he is heavy for so long, and he hath 
kicked with both heels in my flesh every step of the 
way. Another Hopkins, I’ll warrant, I’ve borne for 
my folly in marrying your father; a restless, head- 
strong brood are they, and Oceanus is already not 
content to sit quietly on his mother’s hip, but will 
drive her, like a camel of the desert.” She detached 
Oceanus’s feet from her skirt and handed him over to 
Constance with a jerk. Constance received him, bit- 
ing her lips to hold back laughter, and burying her 
face in the back of the baby neck that had been piti- 
fully thin during the cruel winter, but which was be- 
ginning to wrinkle with plumpness now. 

Too late she concealed her face; Mistress Eliza 
caught a glimpse of it and was upon her. 


140 


A PILGRIM MAID 


“It’s not a matter for laughter that I should be 
pummelled by your brother, however young he may 
be,” she cried; Dame Eliza had a way of under- 
scoring her children’s kinship to Constance whenever 
they were troublesome. “Though, indeed, I carry 
on my back the weight of your father’s children, and 
my heart is worse bruised by the ingratitude of you 
and your brother Giles, than is my flesh with this 
child’s heels. And Mistress Bradford is proud- 
hearted, and that I will maintain, Puritan or no 
Puritan, or whether she be one of the elect of this 
chosen company, or a sinner. For plain could I see 
this afternoon that she held her husband to be a 
better man, and higher in the colony, than my 
husband, nor would she give way one jot when I put 
it before her — though not so that she would see what 
I would be after — that Stephen Hopkins it was who 
was chosen with Mr. Winslow to make the treaty, and 
not William Bradford. Well, far be it from me to 
take pride in wordly things; I thank the good training 
that my mother gave me that I am humble-minded. 
Often and often would she say to me: Eliza, never 
plume yourself that you, and your people before you, 
are, as they are, better, more righteous people than 
are most other folks. For it is our part to bear our 
selves humbly, not setting ourselves up for our virtue, 
but content to know that we have it and to see how 
others are lacking in it, making no traffic with sinners, 


A PILGRIM MAID 


141 

but yet not boasting. And as to you, young women, 
it would be better if you betook yourselves to your 
proper homes, not lingering here to encourage 
Constantia Hopkins to idleness when I’ve my hands 
full, and more than full, to make ready for the Indian 
chiefs’ supper, and I need her help.” 

On this strong hint the Plymouth girls bade 
Constance good-bye and departed, leaving her to a 
bustle of hard work, accompanied by her stepmother’s 
scolding; Dame Eliza had come back dissatisfied from 
her visit, and Constance paid the penalty. 

The next morning the men of Plymouth gathered 
at the house of Elder Brewster, attired in all the 
decorum of their Sunday garb, their faces gravely 
expressive of the importance of the event about to 
take place. 

Captain Myles Standish, indeed, felt some mis- 
givings of the pervading gravity of clothing of the 
civilized participants in this treaty, that it might not 
sufficiently impress their savage allies. He had 
fastened a bright plume that had been poor Rose’s, 
on the side of his hat, and a band of English red ribbon 
across his breast, while he carried arms burnished 
to their brightest, his sword unsheathed, that the sun 
might catch its gleam. 

Elder Brewster shook his head slightly at the sight 
of this display, but let it pass, partly because Captain 
Standish ill-liked interference in his affairs, partly 


A PILGRIM MAID 


142 

because he understood its reason, and half believed 
that the doughty Myles was right. 

Not less solemn than the white men, but as gay 
with colours as the Puritans were sombre, the Indians, 
headed by Massasoit, marched to the rendezvous from 
the house which had been allotted to them for lodging. 

With perfect dignity Massasoit took his place at the 
head of the council room, and saluted Captain Stand- 
ish and Elder Brewster, who advanced toward him, 
then retreated and gave place to Stephen Hopkins and 
Edward Winslow, who were to execute the treaty. 

Its terms had already been discussed, but the 
Indians listened attentively to Squanto’s interpreta- 
tion of Mr. Hopkins’s reading of them. They 
promised, on the part of Massasoit, perfect safety to 
the settlers from danger of the Indians’ harming 
them, and, on the part of the pilgrims, aid to Massasoit 
-against his enemies; on the part of both savage and 
white men, that justice should be done upon any one 
who wronged his neighbour, savage or civilized. 

The gifts that bound both parties to this treaty 
were exchanged, and the treaty, that was so import- 
ant to the struggling colony, was consummated. 

The women and children, even the youths, were 
excluded from the council; the women had enough to 
do to prepare the feast that was to celebrate the 
compact before Massasoit took up his march of 
forty miles to return to his village. 


A PILGRIM MAID 


143 

But Giles leaned against the casement of the open 
door, unforbidden, glowing with pride in his father, 
for the first time in heart and soul a colonist, com- 
pletely in sympathy with the event he was witnessing. 

Stephen Hopkins saw him there and made no sign 
of dismissal. Their eyes met with their old look of 
love; father and son were in that hour united, though 
separated. Suddenly there arose a tremendous 
racket, a volley of shots, a beating of pans, shouts, 
pandemonium. 

Captain Myles Standish turned angrily and saw 
John and Francis Billington, decorated with 
streamers of party-coloured rags, which made them 
look as if they had escaped from a madhouse, leaping 
and shouting, beating and shooting; John firing his 
clumsy “Bouncing Bully” in the air as fast as he 
could load it; Francis filling in the rest of the out- 
rageous performance. 

But worst of all was that Stephen Hopkins, who 
saw what Captain Myles saw, saw also his own boy, 
whom but a moment before he had looked at lov- 
ingly, bent and swayed by laughter. 

Captain Standish strode out in a towering fury to 
deal with the Billingtons, with whom he was cease- 
lessly dealing in anger, as they were ceaselessly 
afflicting the little community with the pranks that 
shocked and outraged its decorum. 

Stephen Hopkins dashed out after him. Quick to 


A PILGRIM MAID 


144 

anger, sure of his own judgments, he instantly 
leaped to the conclusion that Giles had been waiting 
at the door to enjoy this prank when it was enacted, 
and it was a prank that passed ordinary mischief. 
If the Indians recognized it for a prank, they would 
undoubtedly take it as an insult to them. Only the 
chance that they might consider it a serious celebra- 
tion of the treaty, afforded hope that it might not 
annul the treaty at its birth, and put Plymouth in a 
worse plight than before it was made. 

Mr. Hopkins seized Giles by the shoulders and 
shook him. 

“You laugh? You laugh at this, you young 
wastrel?” he said, fiercely. “By heavens, I could 
deal with you for conniving at this, which may earn 
salt tears from us all, if the savages take it amiss and 
retaliate on us. Will you never learn sense? How, 
in heaven’s name, can you help on with this, knowing 
what you know of the danger to your own sisters 
should the savages take offence at it? Angels above 
us, and but a moment agone I thought you were my 
son, and rejoicing in this important day!” 

Giles, white, with burning eyes, looked straight into 
his father’s eyes, rage, wounded pride, the sudden 
revolt of a love that had just been enkindled anew in 
him, distorting his face. 

“You never consider justice, sir,” he said, chok- 
ingly. “You never ask, nor want to hear facts, lest 


A PILGRIM MAID 


145 

they might be in my favour. You welcome a chance 
to believe ill of me. It is Giles, therefore the worst 
must be true; that’s your argument.” 

He turned away, head up, no relenting in his air, 
but the boy’s heart in him was longing to burst in 
bitter weeping. 

Stephen Hopkins stood still, a swift doubt of his 
accusation, of himself, keen sorrow if he had wronged 
his boy, seizing him. 

“Giles, stop. Giles, come back,” he said. 

But Giles walked away the faster, and his father 
was forced to return to Massasoit, to discover 
whether he had taken amiss what had happened, and, 
if he had, to placate him, could it be done. 

To his inexpressible relief he found that their 
savage guests had not suspected that the boys’ mis- 
chief had been other than a tribute to themselves, 
quite in the key of their own celebrations of joyous 
occasions. 

After the dinner in which all the women of the 
settlement showed their skill, the Indians departed 
as they had come, leaving Squanto to be the invalu- 
able friend of their white allies. 

Giles kept out of his father’s way; Stephen Hop- 
kins was not able to find him to clear up what he be- 
gan to hope had been an unfounded suspicion on his 
part. “Zounds!” said the kind, though irascible 
man. “Giles is almost grown. If I did wrong him, 


A PILGRIM MAID 


146 

I am sorry and will say so. An apology will not 
harm me, and is his due — that is in case it is due! 
I’ll set the lad an example and ask his pardon if I 
misjudged him. He did not deny it, to be sure, but 
then Giles is too proud to deny an unjust accusa- 
tion. And he looked innocent. Well, a good lad is 
Giles, in spite of his faults. I’ll find him and get to 
the bottom of it.* 

“Giles is all right, Stephen,” said Myles Standish, 
to whom he was speaking. “Affairs that go wrong 
between you are usually partly your own fault. He 
needs guiding, but you lose your own head, and then 
how can you guide him? But those Billington boys, 
they are another matter! By Gog and Magog, there’s 
got to be authority put into my hands to deal with 
them summarily! And their father’s a madman, 
no less. I told them to-day they’d cool their heels 
in Plymouth jail; we’d build Plymouth jail expressly 
for that purpose. And I mean it. I’m the last man 
to be hard on mischief; heaven knows I was a harum- 
scarum in my time. But mischief that is overflow- 
ing spirits, and mischief that is harmful are two diff- 
erent matters. I’ve had all I’ll stand of Jack Billing- 
ton, his Bouncing Bully and himself!” 

“Here comes Connie. I wonder if she knows any- 
thing of her brother? If she does, she’ll speak of it; 
if she doesn’t, don’t disturb her peace of mind, Myles. 
My pretty girl! She hurts me by her prettiness, here 


A PILGRIM MAID 


H 7 

in the wilderness, far from her right to a sweet girl’s 
dower of pleasure, admiration, dancing, and ” 

“Stephen, Stephen, for the love of all our discarded 
saints, forbear!” protested Captain Myles, inter- 
rupting his friend, laughing. “If our friends about 
here heard you lamenting such a list of lost joys for 
Constance, by my sword, they’d deal with you no 
gentler than I purpose dealing with the Billingtons! 
Ah, sweet Con, and no need to ask how the day of 
the treaty hath left you! You look abloom with 
youth and gladness, dear lass.” 

“I am happy,” said Constance, slipping her hand 
into her father’s and smiling up into the faces of both 
the men, who loved her. “Wasn’t it a great day, 
Father? Isn’t it blessed to feel secure from inva- 
sion, and, more than that, secure of an ally, in case 
of unknown enemies coming? Oh, Father, Giles was 
so proud of you! It was funny, but beautiful, to see 
how his eyes shone, and how straight he carried him- 
self, because his father was the man who made the 
treaty for us all! I love you, dearest, quite enough, 
and I am proud of you to bursting point, but Giles is 
almost a man, and he is proud of you as men are 
proud; meseems it is a deeper feeling than in us 
women, who are content to love, and care less for 
ambition.” 

Stephen Hopkins winced; he saw that Constance 
did not know that anything was again amiss between 


148 A PILGRIM MAID 

the two who were dearest to her on earth, but he 
said: 

“ ‘Us women/ indeed, Constantia ! Do you reckon 
yourself a woman, who art still but my child- 
daughter ?” 

“Not a child, Father,” said the girl, truly enough, 
shaking her head hard. “No pilgrim maid can be a 
child at my age, having seen and shared what hath 
fallen to my lot. And to-morrow there is to be an- 
other treaty made of peace and alliance, which is 
much on my mind, because I am a woman and be- 
cause I love Priscilla. To-morrow is Pris married, 
Father.” 

“Of a truth, and so she is!” cried Stephen Hopkins, 
slapping his leg vigorously. 

“Well, my girl, and what is it? Do you want to 
deck her out, as will not be allowed ? Or what is on 
your mind?” 

“Oh, I have made her a white gown, Father,” said 
Constance. “Whatever they say, sweet Pris shall 
not go in dark clothing to her marriage! But, 
Father, Mr. Winslow is to marry her, as a magis- 
trate, which he is. Is there no way to make it a 
little like a holy wedding, with church, and prayers, 
and religion?” 

“My dear, they have decided here that marriage 
is but a matter belonging to the state. You must 
check your scruples, child, and go along with ar- 


A PILGRIM MAID 


149 


rangements as they are. There is much of your 
earliest training, of your sainted mother’s training, 
in you yet, my Constance, and, please God, you will 
remain her daughter always. But you cannot alter 
the ways of Plymouth colony. So be content, sweet 
Con, to pray for our Pris all you will, and rest as- 
sured they receive blessings who seek them, however 
they be situate,” said Stephen Hopkins, gently 
touching his girl’s white-capped head. 

“Ah, well,” sighed Constance, turning away in 
acquiescence. 

Captain Myles Standish and her father watched 
Constance away. Then they turned in the other 
direction with a sigh. 

“Hard to face westward all the time, my friend; 
even Con feels the tug of old ways, and the old home, 
on her heartstrings,” said Captain Myles. 


CHAPTER XI 


A Home Begun and a Home Undone 

D O YOU know aught of your brother, Con- 
stance ?” asked Stephen Hopkins when he ap- 
peared in the great kitchen and common room of his 
home early the following morning. 

“He hath been away from home all night,” Dame 
Eliza answered for Constance, her lips pulled down 
grimly. 

“Which I know quite well, wife,” said her husband. 
“Constance, did Giles speak to you of whither he 
was going?” 

Constance looked up, meeting her father’s troubled 
eyes, her own cloudless. 

“No, Father, but he must be with the other 
lads. Perhaps they are serving up some merry 
trick for the wedding. Nothing can have befallen 
him. Giles was the happiest lad yesterday, Father 
dear! I must hasten through the breakfast- 
getting!” 

Constance fluttered away in a visible state of 
pleasant excitement. Her father watched her with- 
out speaking, his eyes still gloomy; he knew that 


A PILGRIM MAID 151 

Constance lacked knowledge of his reason for being 
anxious over Giles’s absence. 

“And why should you hasten the getting of break- 
fast, Constantia Hopkins?” demanded Dame Eliza. 
“It is to be no earlier than common. If you are 
thinking to see Priscilla Mullins made the wife of 
John Alden, it will not be till nine of the clock, and 
that is nearly three hours distant.” 

“Ah, but I am going to dress the bride!” triumphed 
Constance. “I’m going to dress her from top to 
toe, and coil her wealth of glossy hair, to show best 
its masses! And to crown her dear pretty face with 
it brought around her brow, as only I can bend it, so 
Pris declares! My dear, winsome Pris!” 

“Will you let be such vanity and catering to sinful 
worldliness, Stephen Hopkins?” demanded that un- 
fortunate man’s wife, with asperity. “Why will you 
allow your daughter to divert Priscilla Mullins from 
the awfulness of the vows she will utter, filling her 
mind with thoughts that ill become a Puritan bride, 
and one to be a Puritan wife? I will say for your 
wife, sir, that she did not come to vow herself to you 
in such wise. And when Constantia herself becomes 
a matron of this plantation she will not deport her- 
self becomingly if she spend her maidenhood fostering 
vanity in others. But there is no folly in which you 
will not uphold her! I pray that I may live to keep 
Damaris to the narrow path.” 


A PILGRIM MAID 


152 

“Aye, and my sweet Con hath lost her mother !” 
burst out Stephen Hopkins, already too disturbed 
in mind to bear his wife’s nagging. 

His allusion to Constance’s mother, of whose mem- 
ory his wife was vindictively jealous, would have 
brought forth a storm, but that Constance flew to 
her father, caught him by the arm, and drew him 
swiftly out of the door, saying: 

“Nay, nay, my dear one; what is the use? Let us 
be happy on Pris’s wedding day. I feel as though 
if we were happy it would somehow bring good to her. 
Don’t mind Mistress Eliza; let her rail. If it were 
not about this, it would be something else. Come 
down the grass a way, my father, and see how the 
sunshine sparkles on the sea. The day is smiling 
on Pris, at least, and is decked for her by God, so why 
should my stepmother mind that I shall make the 
girl herself as fair as I know how?” 

“You are a dear lass, Con, child, and I swear I 
don’t know how I should bear my days without you,” 
said Stephen Hopkins, something suspiciously like 
a quaver in his voice. 

He did not return to the house till Con had pre- 
pared the breakfast. Hastily she cleared it away, her 
stepmother purposely delaying the meal as long as 
possible. But Dame Eliza’s utmost contrariness 
could not hold back Constance’s swift work long 
enough to make the hour very late when it was done, 


A PILGRIM MAID 


153 

the room set in order, and Constance herself, un- 
adorned, in her plain Sunday garb, hastening over 
the young grass to where Priscilla awaited her. 

No one else had been allowed to help Constance 
in her loving labour. Beginning with Priscilla’s 
sturdy shoes — there were no bridal slippers in Ply- 
mouth! — Constance, on her knees, laced Pris into 
the gear in which she w’ould walk to meet John Alden, 
and followed this up, garment by garment, which she 
and Priscilla had sewn in their brief spare moments, 
until she reached the masses of shining brown hair, 
which was Priscilla’s glory and Constance’s affection- 
ate pride. 

Brushing, and braiding, and coiling skilfully, 
Constance wound the fine, yet heavy locks around 
Priscilla’s head. 

Then with deft fingers she pulled, and patted and 
fastened into curves above her brow sundry strands 
which she had left free for that purpose, and fell 
back to admire her results. 

“Well, my Prissy!” Constance cried, rapturously 
clapping her hands. “Wait till you are dressed, 
and I let you see this in the glass yonder. No, not 
now! Only when the bridal gown is donned! My 
word, Priscilla Mullins, but John Alden will think 
that he never saw, nor loved you until this day! 
Which is as we would wish him to feel. They may 
forbid us curling and waving our locks in this planta- 


A PILGRIM MAID 


154 

tion, but no one ever yet, as I truly believe, could 
make laws to keep girls from increasing their charms! 
Your hair brought down and shaken loose thus 
around your face, my Pris, is far, far more lovely, 
and adorns you better than any curling tongs could 
do it. Because, after all, nature fits faces and hair 
together, and my waving hair would not be half so 
becoming to you as your own straight hair, thus 
crowning your brow. Constance Hopkins, my girl, 
I am proud of your skill as lady’s maid!” And 
Constance kissed her own hand by way of her re- 
ward, as she went to the corner and gingerly lifted 
the white gown that waited there for her handling. 

It was a soft, fragile thing, made of white stuff 
from the East, embroidered all over with sprigs of 
small flowers. It had been Constance’s mother’s, 
and had come from England at the bottom of her 
own chest, safe hidden, together with other beautiful 
fabrics that had been Constance’s mother’s, from the 
condemnatory eyes of Stephen Hopkins’s second wife. 

“It troubles me to wear this flimsy loveliness, 
Constance,” said Priscilla, as the gown drifted down 
over her shoulders. “And to think it was thy 
mother’s.” 

“It will not harm it to lie over your true heart to- 
day, dearest Pris, when you vow to love John forever. 
It seems to me as though lifeless things drew some- 
thing of value to themselves from contact with good- 


A PILGRIM MAID 


155 

ness and love. Pris, it is really most exquisite! And 
that deep ruffle that I sewed around it at the bottom 
makes it exactly long enough for you, yet it leaves it 
still right for me to wear, should I ever want to, only 
by ripping it off again! Oh, Priscilla, dear, you are 
lovely enough, and this embroidery is fine enough, 
for you to be a London bride!” 

Once more Constance fell back to admire at the 
same time Priscilla and her achievements. 

“I think, perhaps, it may be wrong, as they tell 
us it is, to care too much for outward adornment, 
Con dear. Not but that I like it, and love you for 
being so unselfish, so generous to me,” said Priscilla, 
with her sweet gravity of manner. 

“Constance, if only my mother and father, and 
Joseph — but of course my parents I mourn more than 
my brother — were here to bless me to-day!” 

“Try to feel that they are here, Prissy,” said Con- 
stance. “There be Christians in plenty who would 
tell you that they pray for you still.” 

“Oh, but that is superstition!” protested Priscilla, 
shocked. 

Constance set her face into a sort of laughing and 
sweet contrariness. 

“There be Christians in plenty who believe it,” 
she repeated. “And it seems a comforting and in- 
nocent enough thing to me. Art ready now, Pris- 
cilla? But before you go, kiss me here the kind of 


A PILGRIM MAID 


156 

good-bye that we cannot take in public; my good-bye 
to dear Priscilla Mullins; your good-bye to Con, with 
whom, though dear friends we remain for aye, please 
God, you never again will be just the same close 
gossip that we have been as maids together, on ship- 
board and land, through sore grief and hardships, 
yet with abounding laughter when we had half a 
chance to smile.” 

“Why, Con, don’t make me cry!” begged Priscilla, 
holding Constance tight, her eyes filling with tears. 
“You speak sadly, and like one years older than your- 
self, who had learned the changes of our mortal life. 
I’ll not love you less that I am married.” 

“Yes, you will, Pris! Or, if not less, at least 
differently. For maids are one in simple interests, 
quick to share tears and laughter, while the young 
matron is occupied with graver matters, and there is 

not oneness between them. It is right so, but 

Well, then, kiss me good-bye, Pris, my comrade, and 
bid Mistress John Alden, when you know her, love 
me well for your sweet sake,” insisted Constance, not 
far from tears herself. 

Quietly the two girls stole out of the bedroom, 
into the common room of the new house which Doctor 
Fuller had built for the reception of his wife, whose 
coming from England he eagerly awaited. The 
widow White and Priscilla had been lodged there, 
helping the doctor to get it in order. 


A PILGRIM MAID 


*57 

“You look well, Priscilla,” said Mrs. White. “Say 
what they will, there is something in the notion of a 
young maiden going in white to her marriage. Your 
friends are waiting you outside. I wish you well, my 
daughter, and may you be blessed in all your under- 
takings.” 

Priscilla went to the door and Constance opened it 
for her, stepping back to let the bride precede her. 
Beyond it were waiting the young girls of the settle- 
ment; Humility Cooper and her cousin, Elizabeth 
Tilley, caught Priscilla by the hands. 

“How fair you are, dear!” cried Humility. “The 
children begged to be allowed to come to your wed- 
ding, and they are all waiting at Mr. Winslow’s, for 
you were always their great friend, and there is 
scarce a limit to their love for John Alden.” 

“Surely let the children come!” said Priscilla. 
“They are first of all of us, and will win blessings 
for John Alden and me.” 

The girls fell into line ahead of her, and Priscilla 
walked down Leyden Street, the short distance that 
lay between the doctor’s house and Edward Winslow’s, 
her head bent, her eyes upon the ground, the colour 
faded from her fresh-tinted face. At the magistrate’s 
house the elders of the little community were gath- 
ered, waiting. John Alden came out and met his 
bride on the narrow, sanded walk, and led her soberly 
into the house and up to Edward Winslow, who 


A PILGRIM MAID 


158 

awaited them in his plain, close-buttoned coat, with 
its broad collar and cuffs of white linen newly and 
stiffly starched and ironed. 

It was a brief ceremony, divested of all but the 
necessary questions and replies, yet to all present 
it was not lacking in impressiveness, for the memory 
of recent suffering was vivid in every mind; the long- 
ing for the many who were dead was poignant, and 
the consciousness of the uncertainty of the future of 
the young people, who were thus beginning their 
life together, was acute, though no one would have 
allowed its expression, lest it imply a lack of faith. 

When Mr. Winslow had pronounced John and 
Priscilla man and wife, Elder William Brewster arose 
and, with extended hands, called down upon their 
heads the blessing of the God of Israel, and prayed 
for their welfare in this world, their reward in the 
world to come. 

Without any of the merriment which accompanied 
congratulations and salutations at a marriage in 
England, these serious men and women came up in 
turn and gravely kissed the bride upon her cheek, 
and shook John Alden’s hand. Yet each one was 
fond of Priscilla and had grieved with her on her 
father's, mother’s, and brother’s deaths, and each one 
honoured and truly was attached to John Alden. 

But even in Plymouth colony youth had to be more 
or less youthful. 


A PILGRIM MAID 159 

“Come, now; we’re taking you home!” cried 
Francis Billington. “Fall in, girls and boys, big 
and little, grown folks as well, if only you will, and 
let us see our bride and her man started in their new 
home! And who remembers a rousing chorus?” 

John Alden had been building his house with the 
help of the older boys; to it now he was taking Pris- 
cilla on her wedding journey, made on her own feet, 
a distance of a few hundred yards. 

“No rousing choruses here, sir,” said Edward 
Winslow, sternly. “If you will escort our friends 
to their home — and to that there can be no objection 
— let it be to the sound of godly psalms, not to pro- 
fane songs.” 

“You offer us youngsters little inducement to 
marry when our time comes,” muttered Francis, 
but he took good care that Mr. Winslow should not 
hear him, having no desire to run counter at that 
moment to Mr. Winslow’s will, knowing that he and 
Jack were already in danger of being dealt with 
by the authorities. And where was Jack? He had 
not seen his brother since the previous day. 

Boys and young men in advance, girls and the 
younger women following, the bridal pair bringing 
up the rear, the little procession went up Leyden 
Street and drew up at the door of the exceedingly 
small house which John Alden had made for his wife. 
Francis, who had constituted himself master of 


i6o 


A PILGRIM MAID 


ceremonies, made the escort divide into two lines 
and, between them, John and Priscilla walked into 
their house. And with that the wedding was 
over. 

For an instant the young people held their places, 
staring across the space that separated them, with 
the blank feeling that always follows after the end 
of an event long anticipated. 

Then Constance turned with a sigh, looking about 
her, wondering if she really were to resume her work- 
aday tasks, first of all get dinner. 

She met her father’s intent gaze and his look 
startled her. He beckoned her, and she stepped 
back out of the line and joined him. 

“Giles, Constance; where is he?” demanded 
Stephen Hopkins. 

“Father, I don’t know! Isn’t he here?” she cried. 

“He is not here, nor is John Billington,” said her 
father. “No one has seen either of them since last 
night. Is it likely that they would absent themselves 
willingly from this wedding; Giles, who is so fond of 
John Alden; John Billington, who is so fond of any- 
thing whatever that breaks the monotony of the 
days?” 

Constance shook her head. “No, Father,” she 
whispered. 

“No. And you have no clue to this disappear- 
ance, Constance?” her father insisted. 


A PILGRIM MAID 


161 


“Father, Father, no; no, indeed !” protested Con- 
stance. “I did not so much as miss the boys from 
among us. But what could have befallen them? It 
can’t be that they have come to harm?” 

“Constance,” said her father with a visible effort, 
“Giles was deeply angry with me yesterday ” 

“Father, dear Father, you are quite wrong!” Con- 
stance interrupted him. “There was no mistaking 
how delighted Giles was with your making the treaty. 
Indeed I saw in him all the old-time love and pride 
in you that we used to make a jest — but how we 
liked it! — in the dear days across the water, when we 
were children.” 

Stephen Hopkins let her have her say. Then he 
shook his head. 

“It may all be as you say, Constance,” he said, 
sadly. “I also felt in Giles, saw in his face, the 
affection I have missed of late. But when the Billing- 
tons came making that disturbance I went out — 
angry, Con; I admit it — and accused Giles of abetting 
them in what might have caused us serious trouble. 
And he, in turn, was furiously angry with me. He 
did not reply to my accusation, but spoke imperti- 
nently to me, and went away. I have not seen him 
since.” 

“Oh, Father, Father!” gasped Constance, her lips 
trembling, her face pale. 

“I know, my daughter,” said Stephen Hopkins, 


A PILGRIM MAID 


162 

almost humbly. “But it was an outrageous thing 
to risk offending our new allies, and inviting the death 
of us all. And Giles did not deny having a hand in 
it, remember. But I confess that I should have first 
asked him whether he had, or not.” 

“Poor Father,” said Constance, gently. “It is 
hard enough to be anxious about your boy without 
being afraid that you wronged him. How I wish 
that Giles would not always stand upon his dignity, 
and scorn speech! How I wish, how I pray, that 
you may come to understand each other, to trust 
each other, and be as we were when you trotted 
Giles and me upon your knees, and I sometimes 
feared that you liked me less than you did your hand- 
some boy, who was so like you.” 

“Who is so like me,” her father corrected her. 
“You were right, Con, when you said that Giles and 
I were too alike to get on well together; the same 
quick temper, rash action, swift conclusions.” 

“The same warm heart, high honour, complete 
loyalty,” Constance amended, swiftly. 

“Father, if you could but once and for ever grasp 
that! Giles is you again in your best traits. He can 
be the reliance that you are, but if he turns 
wrong ” 

She paused and her father groaned. 

“Ah, Constance, you are partial to me, yet you 
stab me. If I have turned him wrong, is what you 


A PILGRIM MAID 


163 

would say ! How womanly you are grown, my daugh- 
ter, and how like your dead mother! But, Con, this 
is no time to stand discussing traits, not even to ad- 
just the blame of this wretched business. How shall 
I find the boy? ,, 

“Why, for that, Father, you know far better than 
I,” said Constance, gently, taking her father’s arm. 
“Let us go home, dear man. I should think a party 
to scour the woods beyond us? And Squanto would 
be our best help, he and Captain Standish, wouldn’t 
they? But I am sure the boys will be in for supper. 
You know they are sharp young wolves, with a scent 
like the whole pack in one for supper! Giles is safe! 
And as to Jack Billington, tell me truly. Father, 
can you imagine anything able to harm him?” She 
laughed with an excellent reproduction of her own 
mirth when she possessed it, but it was far from hers 
now. 

Constance shared to the uttermost her father’s ap- 
prehension. If her poor, hasty father had again 
accused Giles of that which he had not done, and this 
when he was aglow with a renewal of the old con- 
fidence between them, then it well might be that 
Giles, equally hot-headed, had done some desperate 
thing in his first sore rage. The fact that he had been 
absent from the wedding of John Alden, whom he 
cared for deeply; that he had missed his supper and 
breakfast; and that John Billington, reckless, ad- 


A PILGRIM MAID 


164 

venturous Jack, was missing at the same time, left 
Constance little ground for hope that nothing was 
wrong. 

But nothing of this did she allow to escape in her 
manner of speech. 

She gaily told her father all about her morning: how 
cleverly she had lengthened Priscilla’s gown, her own 
mother’s gown, lent Pris; how becomingly she had 
arranged Pris’s pretty hair; all the small feminine 
details which a man, especially a brave, manly man 
of Stephen Hopkins’s kind, is supposed to scorn, 
but which Constance was instinctively sympathetic 
enough to know rested and amused her father; 
soothed him with its pretty femininity; relaxed him 
as proving that in a world of such pretty trifles 
tragedy could not exist. 

“My stepmother is not come back yet,” Con- 
stance said, with a swift glance around, as she en- 
tered. “Father, when she comes in with the baby 
you must test his newly discovered powers; Oceanus 
is beginning to stand alone! Now I must go doff* my 
Sunday best — Father, I never can learn to call it the 
Sabbath; please forgive me! — and put on my busy- 
maid clothes! What a brief time a marriage takes! 
I mean in the making! ” She laughed and ran lightly 
away, up the steep stairs that wound in threatening 
semi-spiral, up under the steep lean-to roof. 

“Bless my sunshine!” said Stephen Hopkins, 


A PILGRIM MAID 1 65 

fervently, as he watched her skirt whisk around the 
door at the stairway foot. 

But upstairs, in the small room that she and 
Damaris shared, his “sunshine. ” was blurred by a 
swift rain of tears. 


CHAPTER XII 


The Lost Lads 


GRAY evening of mist drifting in from the sea 



/jl settled down upon Plymouth. It emphasized 
the silence and seemed to widen and deepen the 
vacuum created by the absence of Giles and John. 
For the supper hour, at which they were enthusiasti- 
cally prompt to return to give their hearty appetites 
their due, came and passed without bringing back the 


boys. 


Stephen Hopkins pushed away his plate with its 
generous burden untouched, threw on his wide- 
brimmed hat, and strode out of the house without a 
word. Constance knew that he had gone to ask help 
from Myles Standish, to organize a search, and go out 
to find the lost. 

Damaris crept into her sister’s lap and sat with her 
thin little hands in Constance’s, mutely looking up 
into the white, sorrowing face above her. 

Even Dame Eliza was reluctantly moved to some- 
thing like pity for the girl’s silent misery, and ex- 
pressed it in her way. 

“At least,” she said, suddenly, out of the deep 


1 66 


A PILGRIM MAID 


1 67 

silence enveloping them, “here is one thing gone 
wrong without my sending. No one can say that I 
had a finger raised to push your brother out of the 
right course this time! ,, 

Constance tried to reply, but failed. Not directly 
had her stepmother had a share in this misfortune, 
but how great a share had she in the estrangement 
between father and son that was at the bottom of the 
present misunderstanding? Constance would not 
remind her stepmother of this, and no other reply was 
possible to her in her intense anxiety. 

The night wore away, the dawn came, lifting the 
fog as the sun shot up out of the sea. Stephen 
Hopkins came out of the principal bedroom on the 
ground floor of the house showing in his haggard face 
that he had not slept. Constance came slowly down 
the winding stairs, pale, with dark circles under her 
eyes which looked as though they had withdrawn 
from her face, retreated into the mind which dwelt on 
Giles since they could no longer see him, and the 
brain alone could fulfil their office. 

“There’s no sort of use in getting out mourning till 
you’re sure of having a corpse, so I say,” said Mistress 
Eliza, impatiently. “Giles is certain to take care of 
himself. I’ve no manner of patience with people 
who borrow what they can’t return, and how would 
you return trouble, borrowed from nothing and no- 
body?” 


1 68 


A PILGRIM MAID 


Nevertheless she helped both Constance and her 
father to a generous bowlful of porridge, and set it 
before them with a snapped-out: “Eat that!” which 
Constance was grateful to feel concealed uneasiness 
on her stepmother’s own part. 

Another day, and still another, wore themselves 
away. Constance fought to keep her mind occupied 
with all manner of tasks, hoping to tire herself till 
she must sleep at night, but nevertheless slept only 
brokenly, lying staring at the three stars which she 
could see through the tiny oblong window under the 
eaves, or into the blackness of the slanting roof, 
listening to Damaris’s quiet breathing, and thinking 
that childhood was not more blessed in being happy 
than in its ability to forget. 

Stephen Hopkins had gone with Captain Standish, 
Francis Billington, and Squanto to scour the woods 
for miles, although labouring hands could ill be spared 
at that season. They returned at the close of their 
fourth day of absence, and no one ventured to question 
them; that they had not so much as a clue to the lost 
lads was clearly written on their faces. 

Constance drew her stool close to her father after 
supper was over, and wound her arms about him 
and laid her head on his breast, unrebuked by her 
stepmother. 

“Read the fifty-first psalm, my daughter; it was 
the penitential psalm in England in my beginnings,” 


A PILGRIM MAID 169 

Stephen Hopkins said, and Constance read it in a low 
voice, which she dared not raise, lest it break. 

An hour later, an hour which had been passed in 
silence, broken only by Dame Eliza’s taking Damaris 
up to bed, the sound of voices was heard coming down 
the quiet street. Stephen Hopkins’s body tautened 
as he sat erect, and Constance sprang to her feet. 
No one ever went outside his house in the Plymouth 
plantation after the hour for family prayers, which 
was identical in every house. But someone was 
abroad now; it was not possible ? 

“It is Squanto,” said Stephen Hopkins, catching 
the Indian’s syllables of broken English. 

“And Francis Billington, and another Indian, 
talking in his own tongue!” added Constance, shaking 
with excitement. 

The door opened; Stephen Hopkins did not move 
to open it. There entered the three whom those 
within the house had recognized; Francis’s face was 
crimson, his eyes flashing. 

“You come to tell me that my son is dead?” said 
Stephen Hopkins, raising his hand as if to ward off 
a blow. 

“No, we don’t ! Don’t look like that, Mr. Hopkins, 
Con!” cried Francis. “Jack and Giles are all 
right ” 

“Massasoit send him,” said Squanto, interrupting 
the boy, as if he wanted to save Stephen Hopkins 


A PILGRIM MAID 


170 

from betraying the feeling that an Indian would 
scorn to betray, for Mr. Hopkins had closed his eyes 
and swayed slightly as he heard Francis’s high boyish 
voice utter the words he had so hungered to hear. 

Squanto pointed to the Indian beside him as he 
spoke. “Massasoit sent him. Massasoit know where 
boys go. Nawsett. It not far; Massasoit more far. 
Nawsett Indians fight you when you come, not yet got 
Plymouth found. Nawsett. Both boys, both two.” 
Squanto touched two fingers of his left hand. “Not 
dead, not sick, not hurt. You send, Massasoit say. 
Get boys you send Nawsett. Squanto go show 
Nawsett.” Squanto looked proudly at his hearers, 
rejoicing in his good news. 

“Praise God from Whom all blessings flow,” said 
Stephen Hopkins, bowing his head, and Constance 
burst into tears and seized him around the neck, 
while Francis drew his sleeves across his eyes, mutter- 
ing something about: “ Rather old Jackwas all right.” 

Dame Eliza came down the stairs, having heard 
voices, and recognized them as Indian, but had been 
unable to catch what was said. She stopped as she 
saw the scene before her, and her face crimsoned. 
She at once knew the purport, though not the details, 
of the message delivered through Squanto by Mas- 
sasoit’s messenger, and that the lost lads were safe. 
With a quick revulsion from the anxiety that she 
had felt, she instantly lost her temper. 


A PILGRIM MAID 


171 

“Stephen Hopkins, what is this unseemingly exhibi- 
tion? Will you allow your daughter to behave in this 
manner before a youth, and two savage men ? Shame 
on you! Stand up, Constantia, and let your father 
alone. So Giles is safe, I suppose? Well, did I not 
tell you so? Bad sixpences are hard to lose; your 
son will give you plenty of the scant comfort you’ve 
already had from him. No fear of him not coming 
back to plague me, and to disgrace you,” she scolded. 

“Oh, Stepmother, when we are so glad and thank- 
ful!” sighed Constance, lifting her tired, tear-worn 
face, over which the light of her gladness and grati- 
tude was beginning to shine. 

There w T as nothing to be done that night but to 
try to adjust to the relief that had come, and to wait 
impatiently for morning to arrange to bring home the 
wanderers. 

Stephen Hopkins was ahead of the sun in beginning 
the next day, and as soon as he could decently do so, 
he set out to see Governor Bradford to ask his help. 

“I rejoice with you, my friend and brother,” said 
dignified William Bradford, when he had heard Mr. 
Hopkins’s story. “Like the woman in the Gospel 
you call in your neighbours to rejoice with you that 
the lost is found. I will at once send the shallop to 
sail down the coast and bring off our thorn-in-the- 
flesh, young John Billington, and your somewhat 
unruly lad with him. As your brother in our great 


A PILGRIM MAID 


172 

enterprise and your true well-wisher, let me advise 
that you deal sternly with Giles when he is returned 
to us. He hath done exceeding wrong thus to afflict 
you, and with you, all of our community to a lesser 
extent, by anxiety over his safety. Furthermore, 
it is a time in which we need all our workers; he hath 
not only deprived us of his own services, but hath 
demanded the valuable hours of others in striving to 
rescue him. I doubt not that you will do your duty 
as a father, but let me remind you that your duty is 
not leniency, but sternness to the lad who is too nearly 
man to fail us all as he hath done.” 

“It is true, William Bradford, and I will do my best 
though it hath afflicted me that I may have driven 
the lad from me by blaming him when it was not his 
desert, and that because of this he went away,” said 
Mr. Hopkins. 

“If this were true, Stephen, yet would it not excuse 
Giles,” said William Bradford, whose one child, a boy, 
had been left behind in England to follow his father 
to the New World later, and who was not versed in 
ways of fatherhood to highstrung youths of Giles’s 
age. “It becometh not a son to resent his father’s 
chastisements, which, properly borne, may result in 
benefit, whether or not their immediate occasion was 
a matter of justice or error. So deal with your son 
sternly, I warn you, nor let your natural pleasure in 
receiving him safe back again relax you toward him.” 


A PILGRIM MAID 


173 

The shallop was launched with sufficient men to 
navigate her, Squanto accompanying them to guide 
them southward to the tribe that held Giles and John, 
in a sense, their captives. 

On the third day after her departure the shallop 
came again in sight, nosing her way slowly up the 
harbour against a wind dead ahead and blowing 
strong. There was time, and to spare for any 
amount of preparation, and yet to get down on the 
sands to see the shallop come to anchor, and be 
ready to welcome those whom she bore. Neverthe- 
less, Constance hurried her simple toilet till she was 
breathless, snarling the comb in her hair; tying her 
shoe laces into knots which her nervousness could 
hardly disentangle; chafing her delicate skin with the 
vigorous strokes she gave her face; stooping fre- 
quently to peer out of her bedroom window to see if, 
by an impossible mischance, the shallop had come 
up before she was dressed, although the one glimpse 
that she had managed to get of the small craft had 
shown that the shallop was an hour away down the 
harbour. 

At last her flustered mishaps were over, and Con- 
stance was neat and trim, ready to go down to the 
beach. 

“Damaris, little sister, come up and let me see that 
none of the dinner treacle is on the outside of your 
small mouth,” Constance called gaily down the stairs. 


i 7 4 A PILGRIM MAID 

Damaris appeared, came half way, and stopped 
forlornly. 

“Mother says she will take me, Constance, ” the 
child said, mournfully. “She says that you will 
greet Giles with warm welcome, and that I must not 
help in it, for that Giles is wicked, and must be 
frowned upon. Is Giles wicked, Constance? He is 
good to me; I love him, not so much as you, but I do 
love Giles. Must I not be glad when he comes, 
Sister?” 

“Oh, Damaris, darling, your kind little heart tells 
you that you would want a welcome yourself if you 
were returning after an absence! And we know that 
the father of that bad son in the Gospel went out 
to meet him, and fell on his neck! But I must not 
teach you against your mother’s teaching! You 
know, little lass, whether or not I think our big 
brother bad ! ” said poor Constance. “Where is your 
mother?” 

“She hath gone to fetch Oceanus back; he crawled 
out of the open door and went as fast as a spider 
down the street, crawling, Constance! He looked 
so funny!” and Damaris laughed. 

Constance laughed too, and cried gaily, with one of 
her sudden changes from sober to gay: “And so 
Oceanus is beginning to run off, too! What a time 
we shall have, Damaris, with our big brother march- 
ing away, and our baby brother crawling away, both 


A PILGRIM MAID 


175 

of them caring not a button whether we are fright- 
ened about them, or not!” 

She flitted down the stairs with her lightness of 
movement that gave her the effect of a half-flight, 
caught Damaris to her and kissed her soundly, and 
set her down just in time to escape rebuke for her 
demonstrativeness from Dame Eliza, who returned 
with her face reddened, and Oceanus kicking under 
one arm, hung like a sack below it, and screaming 
with baffled rage and the desire of adventure. On 
the beach nearly everyone of the small community 
was gathered to see the arrival. 

Constance stole up behind Priscilla Alden, and 
touched her shoulder. 

“You are not the only happy girl here to-day, my 
bonny bride,” she said. 

Priscilla turned and caught Constance by both 
hands. 

“Nor the only one glad for this cause, Constance,” 
she retorted. “Indeed I rejoice beyond my powers 
of telling, that Giles is come to thee, and that thou 
art spared the bitter sorrow that we feared had fallen 
upon thee!” 

“Well do I know that, dear Pris,” said Constance. 
“Where is my father?” 

“Yonder with William Bradford, Edward Winslow, 
Elder Brewster; do you not see?” Priscilla replied 
nodding toward the group that stood somewhat 


A PILGRIM MAID 


176 

apart from the others. Constance crossed over to 
them, and curtseyed respectfully to the heads of this 
small portion of the king’s subjects. 

“Will you not come with me, my father?” she said, 
hoping that Stephen Hopkins would stand with her 
on the edge of the sands to be the first whom Giles 
would see on arriving, identifying himself with her 
who, Giles would know, was watching for him with 
a heart leaping out toward him. 

“No, Daughter, I will remain here. I am to-day 
less Giles Hopkins’s father than one of the representa- 
tives of this community, which he and John Billing- 
ton have offended,” replied Stephen Hopkins, but 
whether with his mind in complete accord with his 
decision, or stifling a longing to run to meet his son, 
like that other father of whom Constance had spoken 
to Damaris, the girl could not tell. 

She turned away, recognizing the futility of plead- 
ing when her father was flanked as he then was. 

The shallop was beached and the lost lads leaped 
out, John with a broad grin on his face, unmixed 
enjoyment of the situation visible in his every look; 
Giles with his eyes troubled, joy in getting back 
struggling with his misgivings as to what he might 
find awaiting him. 

The first thing that he found was Constance, and 
there was no admixture in the delight with which he 
seized his sister’s hands — warmer greeting being 


A PILGRIM MAID 177 

impossible before a concourse which would rebuke it 
sternly — and replied fervently to her: “Oh, Giles, 
how glad I am to see you again !” 

“And I to see you, sweet sis! Ah, there is Pris! 
I missed her wedding. And there is John Alden!” 
said Giles, shading his eyes with his hand, but Con- 
stance saw the eyes searching for his father, and 
merely glancing at Priscilla and John. 

“Our father is with the other weighty men of our 
plantation, waiting for you, Giles. You and John 
must go to them,” suggested Constance. 

Giles shrugged his shoulders. “Otherwise they 
will not know we are back?” he asked. “Very well; 
come, then, Jack. The sooner the better; then the 
gods are propitiated.” 

The two wilful lads walked over to the grave men 
awaiting them. 

“We thank you, Governor Bradford, for sending 
the shallop after us, “said Giles. 

“Is this all that you have to say?” demanded 
William Bradford. 

' c No, sir; we have had adventures. We wandered 
five days, subsisting on berries and roots; came upon 
an Indian village, called Manamet, which we reckon 
to be some twenty miles to the southward of Ply- 
mouth here. These Indians conveyed us on to 
Nawsett still further along, and there we rested until 
the shallop appeared to take us off. This is, in 


178 A PILGRIM MAID 

brief, the history of our trip, although I assure you, 
it was longer in the living than in the telling. Permit 
me to add. Governor, that those Indians among whom 
we tarried are coming to make a peace with us and 
seek satisfaction from those of our community who 
took their corn what time we were dallying at Cape 
Cod, when we arrived in the Mayflower. This is, 
perhaps, in a measure due to our visit to them, though 
we would not claim the full merit of it, since it may 
also be partly wrought by Massasoit’s example.” 

Giles spoke with an easy nonchalance that held no 
suggestion of contrition, and William Bradford, as 
well as Elder Brewster, and Mr. Winslow, frowned 
upon him, while his father flushed darkly under the 
bronze tint of his skin, and his eyes flashed. At every 
encounter this father and son mutually angered each 
other. 

“ Inasmuch as you have done well, Giles Hopkins 
and John Billington, we applaud you,” said Gover- 
nor Bradford, slowly. “In sooth we are rejoiced 
that you are not dead, not harmed by your adven- 
ture. We rejoice, also, in the tidings of peace with 
yet another savage neighbour. But we demand of 
you recognition of your evil ways, repentance for 
the anxiety that you have caused those to whom you 
are dear, to all Christians, who, as is their profession, 
wish you well; for the injury you have done us in 
taking yourselves off, to the neglect of your season- 


A PILGRIM MAID 


179 

able labours, and the time which hath been wasted 
by able-bodied men searching for you. You have 
not asked your father to pardon you/’ 

Giles looked straight into his father’s eyes. Un- 
fortunately there was in them nothing of the look 
they had worn a few nights earlier when Constance 
had read to him the psalm of the stricken heart. 

“I am truly grieved for the suffering that I know 
my sister bore while my fate was uncertain, for I 
know well her love for me. And I regret being a 
charge upon this struggling plantation. As far as 
lies in my power I will repay that debt to it. But 
as to my father, his last words to me expressed his 
dislike for me, and his certainty that I was a wrong- 
doer. I cannot think that he has grieved for me,” 
said poor Giles, speaking like a man to men until, at 
the last words, his voice quavered. 

“I have grieved for thee often and bitterly, Giles, 
and over thee, which is harder for a father than 
sorrow for a son. Show me that I am wrong in my 
judgment of thee, by humbling thyself to my just 
authority, and conducting thyself as I would have 
thee act, and with a great joy in my heart I will con- 
fess myself mistaken in thee, and thank Heaven for 
my error,” said Stephen Hopkins. 

Giles’s eyes wavered, he dropped his lids, and bit 
his lip. The simple manhood in his father’s words 
moved him, yet he reflected that he had been justified 


180 A PILGRIM MAID 

in resenting an unfounded suspicion on this father’s 
part, and he steeled himself against him. More 
than this, how could he reply to him when he was 
surrounded by the stern men who condemned youth- 
ful folly, and whom Giles resisted in thought and 
deed ? 

Giles turned away without raising his eyes; he did 
not see a half movement that his father made to hold 
out his hand to detain him. 

“Time will right, or end everything,” the boy 
muttered, and walked away. 

Constance, who had been watching the meeting 
between her two well-beloveds, crossed over to Myles 
Standish. 

“Captain Standish,” she begged him, “Come with 
me; I need you.” 

“Faith, little Con, I need you always, but never 
have you! You show scant pity to a lonely man, 
that misses his little friend,” retorted Captain Stand- 
ish, turning on his heel, obedient to a gesture from 
Constance to walk with her. 

“It is about Giles, dear Captain,” Constance 
began. “He is back, I am thankful for it, but this 
breach between him and my father is a wide one, and 
over such a foolish thing! And it came about just 
when everything was going well!” 

“Foolish trifles make the deepest breaches, Con- 
stance, hardest to bridge over,” said Captain Myles. 


A PILGRIM MAID 


181 


“I grant you that the case is serious, chiefly because 
the man and the boy love each other so greatly; that, 
and their likeness, is what balk them. What would 
you have me do?” 

“I don’t know, but something!” cried Constance 
wringing her hands. “I hoped you would have a 
plan by which you could bring them together.” 

“Well, truth to tell, Con, I have a plan by which to 
separate them,” said the captain, adding, laughing — 
as Constance cried out : “Oh, not for all time !” — “But 
I think a time spent apart would bring them together 
in the end. Here is my plan: I am going exploring. 
There is that vast tract of country north of us which 
we have not seen, and tribes of savages, of which 
Squanto tries to tell us, but which he lacks of English 
to describe. I am going to take a company of men 
from here and explore to the nor’ard. I would take 
Giles among them. He will learn self-discipline, 
obedience to me — I am too much a soldier to be lax 
in exacting obedience from all who serve under me — 
and he will return here licked into shape by the 
tongue of experience, as an unruly cub is licked into 
his proper form by his dam. In the meantime 
your father will see Giles more calmly than at short 
range, and will not be irritated by his manly airs. 
When they come together again it will be on a new 
plane, as men, not as man and boy, and I foresee 
between them the sane enjoyment of their profound 


1 82 A PILGRIM MAID 

I 

mutual affection. I had it in mind to ask Stephen 
Hopkins to lend me his boy; what say you, my Con- 
stance ?” 

“I say: Bless you, and thrice over bless you, Cap- 
tain Myles Standish!” cried Constance. “It is the 
very solution! Oh, I am thankful! I shall be anx- 
ious every hour till you return, but with all my heart 
I say: Take Giles with you and teach him sense. 
What should we ever do here without you, Captain, 
dear ‘Arm-of-the-Colony’ ? ” 

“I doubt you ever have a chance to try that dire 
lack, my Con, ,, said Captain Myles, with a humor- 
ous look at her. “I think I’m chained here by the 
interest that has grown in me day by day, and that I 
shall die among you. Though, by my sword, it’s a 
curious thing to think of Myles Standish dying among 
strict Puritans !” 


CHAPTER XIII 


Sundry Herbs and Simples 

S TEPHEN HOPKINS and his son drew no nearer 
together as the days went by. 

Hurt and angry, Giles would not bend his stiff 
young neck to humble himself, checking any impulse 
to do so by reminding himself that his father had been 
unjust to him. 

Yet Doctor Fuller, good, kind, and wise, had the 
right of it when he said to the lad one day, laying 
his arm across Giles’s shoulders, caressingly: 

“ Remember, lad, that who is right, or who is 
wrong in a quarrel, or an estrangement, matters 
little, since we are all insects of a day and our dignity 
at best a poor thing, measured by Infinite standards. 
But he is always right who ends a quarrel; ten thou- 
sand times right if he does it at the sacrifice of his 
own sense of injury, laying down his pride to lift 
a far greater possession. There may be a difference 
of opinion as to which is right when two have fallen 
out, but however that be, the situation is in itself 
wrong beyond dispute, and all the honour is his who 
ends it.” 


183 


A PILGRIM MAID 


184 

Giles heard him with lowered head, and knit brows, 
but he did not resent the brief sermon. Doctor 
Fuller was a gentle spirit; all his days were given 
over to healing and helping; he was free from the 
condemnatory sternness of most of the colonists, 
and Giles, as all others did, loved him. 

Giles kicked at the pebbles in the way, the slow 
colour mounting in his face. Then he threw back his 
head and looked the good doctor squarely in the eyes. 

“Ah, well, Doctor Fuller,” he said. “I’d wel- 
come peace, but what would you? My father con- 
demns me, sees no good in me, nor would he wel- 
come back the old days when we were close friends. 
There will be a ship come here from home some time 
on which I can sail back to England. It will be 
better to rid my father of my hateful presence; yet 
should I hate to leave Sis — Constance.” 

“May the ship never leave the runway that shall 
take you from us, Giles, lad,” said the doctor. “You 
are blind not to see that it is too-great love for thee 
that ails thy father! It often works to cross purposes, 
our unreasonable human affection. But the case 
is by no means past curing when love awry is the 
disease. Do your part, Giles, and all will be well.” 

But Giles did not alter his course, and when 
Captain Myles Standish said to Stephen Hopkins: 
“We set forth on the eighteenth of September to 
explore the Massachusetts. I shall take ten men of 


A PILGRIM MAID 185 

our colour, and three red men, two besides Squanto. 
Let me have your lad for one of my band, old friend. 
I think it will be his remedy,” Stephen Hopkins 
welcomed the suggestion, as Giles himself did, and 
it was settled. The Plymouth company sailed away 
in their shallop on a beautiful, sunshiny morning 
when the sun had scarcely come up out of the sea. 

Giles and his father had shaken hands on parting, 
and Stephen Hopkins had given the boy his blessing; 
both were conscious that it might be a final parting, 
since no one could be sure what would befall the 
small band among untried savages. 

Yet there was no further reconciliation than this, 
no apology on the one side, nor proffered pardon on 
the other. 

Constance clung long around her brother’s neck 
in the dusk in which she had risen to prepare his 
breakfast; she did not go down to see the start, being 
heavy hearted at Giles’s going, and going without 
lifting the cloud completely between him and his 
father. She bade him good-bye in the long low room 
under the rear of the lean-to, where wood was piled 
and water buckets were set and storage made of 
supplies. 

“Oh, Giles, Giles, my dearest, may God keep you 
and bring you back!” Constance whispered, and 
then let her brother go. 

She went about her household tasks that morning 


A PILGRIM MAID 


1 86 

with lagging step and unsmiling lips. Damaris fol- 
lowed her, wistfully, much depressed by the unusual 
dejection of Constance, who, in spite of her step- 
mother’s disapproval of anything like merriment, 
ordinarily contrived to entertain Damaris to the top 
of her bent when the household tasks were getting 
done. 

“Will Giles never come home again, Connie?” 
the child asked at last, and Constance cried with a 
catch in her voice: 

“Yes, oh yes, little sister! We know he will, be- 
cause we so want him!” 

“There must be a better ground for hope than 
our poor desires, Damaris,” Dame Eliza was be- 
ginning, speaking over the child at Constance, when 
opportunely a shadow fell across the floor through 
the open door and Constance turned to see Doctor 
Fuller smiling at her. 

“Good morning, Mistress Hopkins; good morning 
little Damaris; and good morning to you, Constance 
lass!” he said. “Is this a day of especial business? 
Are you too busy for charity to your neighbours, 
beginning with me, and indirectly reaching out to 
our entire community?” 

Constance smiled at him with that swift brighten- 
ing of her face that was one of her chief attractions; 
her expression was always playing between grave 
and gay. 


A PILGRIM MAID 


187 

“It is not a day of especial business, Doctor Ful- 
ler, ” she said, “or at least all our days are especial 
ones where there is everything yet to be done. But 
I could give it over to charity better than some other 
days, and if it were charity to you — though I fear 
there is nothing for such as I to do for such as you — - 
then how gladly would I do it, if only to pay a tittle 
of the debt we all owe to you.” 

“Good child!” said the doctor. “I need help 
and comradeship in my herb gathering; it is to be 
done to-day, if you will be that helper. There is no 
wind, and there is that benignity of sun and sky that 
hath always seemed to me to impart special virtue 
to herbs gathered under it. So will you come with 
me ? We will gather the morning long, and this after- 
noon I purpose distilling, in which necessary work 

your deft fingers will be of the greatest assistance to 
99 

me. 

“Gladly will I go,” cried Constance, flushing with 
pleasure. “I will fetch my basket and shears, put 
on my bonnet, and be ready in a trice. Shall I pre- 
pare a lunch, or shall I be at home again for dinner?” 

“Neither, Constance; there is yet another alterna- 
tive.” Doctor Fuller looked with great satisfaction 
at Constance’s happier face as he spoke; she had 
been so melancholy when he had come. “I have 
arranged that you shall be my guest at dinner in 
my house, and after it we will to work in my substi- 


1 88 


A PILGRIM MAID 


tute for a laboratory. Mistress Hopkins, Constance 
will be quite safe, be assured; and you, I trust, will 
not mind a quiet day with Damaris and Oceanus to 
bear you company ?” 

“And if I did mind it, would that prevent it?” 
demanded Dame Eliza with a toss of her head. “Not 
even with a ‘by your leave’ does Constantia Hopkins 
arrange her goings and comings.” 

“Which was wholly my fault in not first putting 
my question to you, instead of to Constance di- 
rectly,” said Doctor Fuller. “And surely there is no 
excuse for my blundering, I who am trained to feel 
pulses and look at tongues! But since it is thus 
happily concluded, and your stepmother is glad to 
let you have a sort of holiday, come then; hasten, 
Constance girl!” 

Constance ran upstairs to hide her laughing face. 
She came down almost at once with that face shaded 
by a deep bonnet, a basket hung on her arm, shears 
sticking up out of it, pulling on long-armed half- 
gloves as she came. 

As they walked down the narrow street Constance 
glanced up at Doctor Fuller, interrogatively. 

“And ?” the doctor hinted. 

“And I was wondering whether you were not 
treating me to-day as your patient?” Constance 
said. “A patient with a trouble of the mind, and 
also a heart complaint?” 


A PILGRIM MAID 189 

“Which means ?” The doctor again waited 

for Constance to fill out his question. 

“Which means that you knew I was sorely troubled 
about Giles; that he had gone without better drawing 
to his father; that I was anxious about him, even 
while wishing him to go; and that you gave me this 
day in the woods with you for my healing,” Con- 
stance answered. 

“At least not for your harm, little maid/’ said the 
doctor. “It hath been my experience that the 
gatherer of herbs gets a healing of spirit that is not 
set down in our books among the beneficial qualities 
of the plants, but which may, under conditions, be 
their best attribute. Although the singing of brooks 
and birds, the sweetness of the winds, the solemn 
nobility of the trees, the vastness of the sky, the 
over-brooding presence of God in His creation are 
compounded with the herbs, and impart their powers 
to us with that of the plants.” 

“That is true,” said Constance. “I feel my 
vexations go from me as if my soul were bathed in a 
miraculous elixir, when I go troubled to the woods 
and sit in them awhile.” 

“Of a certainty,” agreed the doctor, bending his 
tall, thin figure to pick a small leaf which he held 
up to Constance. “See this, with its likeness to the 
halberd at its base? This is vervain, which is called 
‘Simpler’s Joy,’ because of the good it yields to those 


190 


A PILGRIM MAID 


who, like us to-day, are simplers, gatherers of simple 
herbs for mankind’s benefit. Now let us hope that 
this single plant is a forerunner of many of its kind, 
for it hath been a sacred herb among the ancients, 
as among Christians, and it should be an augury of 
good to us to find it. Look you, Constance, I do not 
mind confessing it to you, for you are not only 
young, but of that happy sort who yield to imagina- 
tion something of its due. I like my omens to be 
favourable, not in superstition, though our brethren 
would condemn me thus, but from a sense of harmony 
and the satisfaction of it.” 

“How pleasant a hearing is that, Doctor Fuller!” 
laughed Constance. “I love to have the new moon 
aright, though well I know the moon and I have 
naught in common! And though I do not believe 
in fairies, yet do I like to make due allowance for 
them!” 

“It is the poetry of these things, and children like 
you and me, my dear, are not to be deprived of poetry 
by mere facts and common sense,” said the doctor, 
sticking in the band of his hat the sprig of blue ver- 
vain which his sharp eyes had discovered. 

“Yonder on the side of that sandy hill shall we find 
mints, pennyroyal, and the close cousin of it, which is 
blue curls. There is the prunelle, and welcome to 
it! Gather all you can of it, Constance. That is 
self-heal, and a sovereign remedy for quinsy. So 


A PILGRIM MAID 


191 

is it a balm for wounds of iron and steel tools, and for 
both these sorts of afflictions, what with our winter 
climate as to quinsy and our hard labour as to wounds, 
I am like to need abundant self-heal/’ 

Thus pleasantly chatting Doctor Fuller led the 
way, first up the sandy hill where grew the pen- 
nyroyal, all along the border of the woods where 
self-heal abounded. They found many plants unex- 
pectedly, which the doctor always hailed with the joy 
of one who loved them, rather more than of the med- 
ical man who required them, and Constance busily 
snipped the stems, listening to the doctor’s wise and 
kindly talk, loving him for his goodness and kindness 
to her in making her heart light and giving her on 
this day, which had promised to be sad, of his own 
abundant peace. 

“Now, Constance, I shall lead you to a secret of 
my own,” announced the doctor as the sun mounted 
high above them, and noon drew near. “Come 
with me. But do not forget to rejoice in this wealth 
of bloom, purple and blue, these asters along the 
wayside. They are the glory of our new country, 
and for them let us praise God who sets beauty so 
lavishly around us, having no use but to praise Him, 
for not to any other purpose are these asters here, 
and yet, though I cannot use them, am I humbly 
thankful for them. And for these plumes of golden 
and silver flowers beside them, which we did not 


192 


A PILGRIM MAID 


know across the seas. Now, Constance, what say 
you to that?” 

He pointed triumphantly to a small group of plants 
with heart-shaped leaves, having small leaves at their 
base, and which twisted as they grew around their 
neighbouring plants, or climbed a short distance on 
small shrubs. Groups of drooping berries of brilliant, 
translucent scarlet lighted up the little plant settle- 
ment, hanging as gracefully as jewels set by a skilful 
goldsmith for a fair lady’s adornment. 

“I think they are wonderfully beautiful. They 
are like ornaments for a beautiful lady! What are 
they?” cried Constance. 

“They are themselves the beautiful lady,” Doctor 
Fuller said, with a pleased laugh. “That is their 
name — belladonna, which means ‘beautiful lady/ 
They are Atropa Belladonna , to give them their full 
title. But their beauty is only in appearance. If 
they are a belle dame, then she is the belle dame sans 
mercie , a cruel beauty if you cross her. You must 
never taste these berries, Constance. I myself 
planted these vines. I brought them with me, 
carefully set in soil. The beautiful lady can be cruel 
if you take liberties with her, but she is capable of 
kindness. I shall gather the belladonna now and dis- 
til it. In case any one among us ate of poisonous 
toadstools, and were seized with severe spasms of 
the nature of the effect of toadstools, belladonna 


A PILGRIM MAID 


193 

alone would save them. Nightshade, we also call 
this plant. See, I will myself gather this, by your 
leave, my assistant, and place it in my own herb 
wallet.” 

The doctor suited the action to the word, arose 
from his knees and carefully brushed them. “When 
Mistress Fuller comes, which is a weary day awaiting, 
I hope she may not find me fallen into untidiness,” 
he said, whimsically. “Constance, the ship is due 
that will bring my wife and child, if my longing be a 
calendar !” 

“Indeed, dear Doctor Fuller, I often think of it,” 
said Constance. “You who are so good to us all are 
lonely and heavy of heart, but none is made to feel 
it. The comfort is that Mistress Fuller and your 
little one are safe and you will yet see them, while so 
many of the women who came hither in our ship are 
not here now, and those who loved them will never 
see them in this world again.” 

“Surely, my child. I am not repining, for, though 
I am opposed to the extreme strict views of some of 
our community, and they look askance upon me for it 
at times, yet do I not oppose the will of God,” said 
the doctor, simply. 

“Who of them fulfils it as you do?” cried Con- 
stance. “You who go out to minister to the sick 
savages, not content to heal your own brethren?” 

“And are not the savages also our brothers?” 


A PILGRIM MAID 


194 

asked the doctor, taking up his wallet. “Come then, 
child; we will go home, and this afternoon shall you 
learn something of distilling, as you have, I hope, 
this morning learned something of selecting herbs for 
remedies. ” 

Constance went along at the doctor’s side, swing- 
ing her bonnet, not afraid of the hot September sun 
upon her face. It lighted up her disordered hair, 
and turned it into the semblance of burnished metal, 
upon which the doctor’s eyes rested with the same 
satisfaction that had warmed them as he looked on 
the generous beauty of aster and goldenrod, and he 
saw with pleasure that Constance’s face was also 
shining, its brightness returned, and he was well 
content with the effect of his prescription for this 
patient. 

Constance had a gift of forgetting herself in an 
ecstasy that seized her when the weight of her new 
surroundings was lifted. With Doctor Fuller she 
felt perfect sympathy, and her utter delight in this 
lovely day bubbled up and found expression. 

Doctor Fuller heard her singing one of her little 
improvised songs, softly, under her breath, to a 
crooning air that was less an air than a succession of 
sweet sounds. It was the sort of little song with 
which Constance often amused the children of the 
settlement, and Doctor Fuller, that childlike soul, 
listened to her with much of their pleasure in it. 


195 


A PILGRIM MAID 

“Blossom, and berry, and herb of grace; 

Purple and blue and gold lighting each place; 

Herbs for our body and bloom for our heart — 

Beauty and healing, for each hath its part. 

Under the sunshine and in the starlight, 

Warp and woof weareth the pattern aright. 

Shineth the fabric when summer’s at end: 

The garment scarce hiding the Heart of our Friend,” 

Constance sang, nor did the doctor interrupt her 
simple Te Deum by a word. 

At the doctor’s house dinner awaited them, kept 
hot, for they were tardy. After it, and when Con- 
stance had helped to put away all signs of its having 
been, the doctor said to her: 

“Now for my laboratory, such as it is, and for our 
task, my apprentice in medicine!” He conducted 
Constance into a small room, at the rear of the house 
where he had set up tables of various sizes of his own 
manufacture, and where were ranged on the shelves 
running around three sides of the room at different 
heights, bowls, glasses of odd shapes — the uses of 
which were not known to Constance — and small, 
delicate tools, knives, weights, and piles of strips of 
linen, neatly rolled and placed in assorted widths in 
an accessible corner. 

“Mount this stool, Constance, and watch,” the 
doctor bade her. “Pay strict attention to what I 
shall do and tell you. Take this paper and quill 


A PILGRIM MAID 


196 

and note names, or special instructions. I am serious 
in wishing you to know something of my work. I need 
assistance; there is no man to be spared from man's 
work in the plantation, and, to speak the truth, 
your brain is quicker to apprehend me, as your hand 
is more skilful to execute for me in the matters upon 
which I engage than are those of any of the lads who 
are with us. So mount this high stool, my lass, and 
learn your lesson." 

Constance obeyed him. Breathlessly she watched 
the beginnings of the distillation of the belladonna 
which she had seen gathered. 

As the small drops fell slowly into the glass which 
the doctor had set for them, be began to teach 
Constance other things, while the distillation went 
on. 

“These are my phials, Constance," he said. 
“Commit to memory the names of their contents, 
and note their positions. See, on these shelves are 
my drugs. Do you see this dark phial? That is for 
my belladonna. Now note where it is to stand. In 
that line are poisons. Their phials are dark, to 
prevent mistaking them for less harmful drugs, 
which are on this other shelf, in white containers." 

The doctor taught, and Constance obediently re- 
peated her lesson, till the sound of the horn that 
summoned the settlers to their homes for supper, and 
the level rays of the sun across the floor, warned the 


A PILGRIM MAID 


197 


doctor and his pupil that their pleasant day was 
over. 

“But you must return, till you are letter perfect 
in your knowledge, Constance,” the doctor said. “I 
have decided that there must be one person among us 
whom I could dispatch to bring me what I needed in 
case I were detained, and could not come myself/’ 

“I will gladly learn, Doctor Fuller,” said Con- 
stance, her face confirming her assurance. “I have no 
words to tell you how happy it makes me to hope 
that I may one day be useful in such great matters.” 

“As you will be,” the doctor said. “But re- 
member, my child, the lesson of the fields: It does 
not concern us whether great or small affairs are 
given us to do; the one thing is to do well what comes 
our way; to be content to fill the background of 
the picture, or to be a figure in the foreground, as we 
may be required. Aster, goldenrod, herb, all are do- 
ing their portion.” 

“Indeed you have helped me to see that, dear 
Doctor Fuller,” said Constance, gently. “It is not 
ambition, but the remembrance of last winter’s 
hardships, when there was so little aid, that makes 
me wish I could one day help.” 

“Yes, Constance; I know. Good-night, my child, 
and thank you for your patient attention, for your 
help; most of all for your sweet companionship,” 
said the doctor. 


198 A PILGRIM MAID 

“Oh, as to that, I am grateful enough to you! 
You made to-day a happy girl out of a doleful one!” 
cried Constance. “Good-night, Doctor Fuller!” 

She ran down the street, singing softly: 

“Flower, and berry, and herb of grace;” 

till she reached her home and silenced her song 
with a kiss on eager Damaris’s cheek. 


CHAPTER XIV 


Light-Minded Man, Heavy-Hearted Master 

C ONSTANCE HOPKINS sat at the side of the 
cave-like fireplace; opposite to where her father, 
engrossed in a heavy, much-rubbed, leather-bound 
book, toasted his feet beside the fire, as was his 
nightly wont. 

He was too deeply buried in his reading to heed her 
presence, but the girl felt keenly that her father was 
there and that she had him quite to herself. The 
consciousness of this made her heart sing softly in her 
breast, with a contentment that she voiced in the 
softest humming, not unlike the contented song of 
the kettle on the crane, and the purring of the cat, 
who sat with infolded paws between her human 
friends. 

Puck, the small spaniel, and Hecate, the powerful 
mastiff, who had come with the Hopkins family on 
the Mayflower , shared the hearth with Lady Fair, the 
cat, a right that their master insisted upon for them, 
but which Dame Eliza never ceased to inveigh 
against. 

However, Dame Eliza had gone to attend upon a 


199 


200 


A PILGRIM MAID 


sick neighbour that night, a fact which Hecate had 
approvingly noted, with her deep-grooved eyelids 
half-open, and in which Constance, no less than Puck 
and Hecate, rejoiced. 

There was the quintessence of domestic joy in thus 
sitting alone opposite her father, free from the 
sense of an unsympathetic element dividing them, in 
watching the charring of the tremendous back log, 
and the lovely colours in the salt-soaked small sticks 
under and over it which had been cast up by the sea 
and gathered on the beach for this consumption. 

Damaris and baby Oceanus were tucked away 
asleep for the night. It was as if once more Con- 
stance were a child in England with her widowed 
father, and no second marriage had ever clouded 
their perfect oneness. 

So Constance hummed softly, not to disturb the 
reader, the content that she felt not lessened by 
anxiety for Giles; there were hours in which she was 
assured of Giles’s safe return, and this was one of 
them. 

Stephen Hopkins had been conscious of his. girl’s 
loving companionship, though not aware that he felt 
it, till, at last, the small tune that she hummed crept 
through his brain into his thought, and he laid down 
his book to look at her. 

She sat straight and prim by necessity. Her chair 
was narrow and erect — a carved, dark oaken chair, 


A PILGRIM MAID 


201 


with a small round seat; it had been Constance’s 
mother’s, and had come out of her grandfather’s 
Tudor mansion, wherein he had once entertained 
Queen Bess. 

Constance’s dress was of dark homespun stuff, 
coming up close under her soft chin, falling straight 
around her feet, ornamented but with narrow bands 
of linen at her neck and around her wrists. Yet by 
its extreme severity the Puritan gown said: “See 
how lovely this young creature is! Only her fleck- 
less skin, her gracious outlines, could triumph over my 
barrenness!” 

Obedient to her elders’ demands upon her to curb 
its riotousness, Constance had brushed smooth and 
capped her lustrous hair, yet its tendrils escaped upon 
her brow; it glinted below the cap around her ears, 
and in the back of her neck, and shone in the firelight 
like precious metal. 

Stephen Hopkins’s eyes brightened with delight in 
her charm, but, though he was not one of the strictest 
of Plymouth colonists, yet was he too imbued with 
their customs to express his pleasure in Constance’s 
beauty. 

Instead he said, but his voice thrilled with what he 
left unsaid: 

“It’s a great thing, my girl, to draw such a woman 
as Portia, here in this leathern book. She shines 
through it, and you see her clever eyes, her splendid 


202 


A PILGRIM MAID 


presence, best of all her great power to love, to 
humble herself, to forget herself for the man she 
hath chosen! I would have you conversant with the 
women here met, Constance; they are worthy friends 
for you, in the wilderness where such noble ladies are 
rare.” 

“Yet we have fine women and devoted ones here, 
Father,” objected Constance, putting down the fine 
linen that she was hemstitching for her father’s wear- 
ing. He noted the slender, supple hands, long- 
fingered, graceful, yet a womanly hand, made for 
loyalty. 

“Far be it from me to belittle them who re- 
cognized their hard and repulsive duty in the plague 
last winter, and performed it with utter self- 
renunciation,” said Stephen Hopkins. “But, Com 
stance, there is a something that, while it cannot 
transcend goodness, enhances it and places its 
possessor on a sort of dais all her life. Your mother 
had it, child. She was beautiful, charming, winsome, 
gracious, yet had she a lordly way with her; you see it 
in a fine-bred steed; I know not how to describe 
it. She was mettlesome, spirited. It was as if she 
did the right with a sort of inborn scorn for aught low; 
had made her choice at birth for true nobility and 
could but abide by it for aye, having made that 
choice. You have much of her, my lass, and I am 
daily thankful for it. A fine lady, was your ex- 


A PILGRIM MAID 


203 

quisite young mother, and that says it, though the 
term is lowered by common usage. I would that 
you could have known her, my poor child! It was a 
loss hard to accept that you were deprived of her too 
soon, and never could have her direct impress upon 
you. And yet, thank Heaven, she hath left it upon 
you in mothering you, though the memory of her 
doth not bless you. And you sit here, upon a Ply- 
mouth hearthstone, far from the civilization that 
produced her, and to this I brought you!” 

“Oh, Father, Father, my darling!” cried Con- 
stance, flinging aside her work and dropping upon her 
knees beside him, for his voice quivered with an 
emotion that he never before had allowed to escape 
him, as he uttered a self-reproach that no one knew he 
harboured. “Oh, my father, dearest, don’t you know 
that I am happy here? And are you not here with 
me? However fine a lady my sweet mother was — 
and for your sake I am glad indeed if you see any- 
thing of her in me! — yet was she no truer lady than 
you are a fine gentleman. And with you I need no 
better exemplar. As time goes on we shall receive 
from England much of the good we have left behind; 
our colony will grow and prosper; we shall not be 
crude, unlettered. And how truly noble are many of 
our company, not only you, but Governor Bradford, 
Mr. Brewster, Mr. Winslow; their wives; our Arm, 
Captain Myles; and — dearest of all, save you — Doc- 


A PILGRIM MAID 


204 

tor Fuller! No maiden need lack of models who has 
these! But indeed, I want to be all that you would 
have me to be! I cannot say how glad I am if you 
see in me anything of my mother! Not for my sake; 
for yours, for yours !” 

“ Portia after all ! Stephen Hopkins cried, strok- 
ing Constance’s cheek. “That proves how well he 
knew, great Will of Warwickshire — which is our 
county also, my lass! Not for their own sake do 
true women value their charm but for him they love. 
‘But only to stand high in your account I might 
in virtues, beauties, livings, friends, exceed!’ 
So spake Portia; so, in effect, spake you just now. 
That was your mother’s way; she, too, longed to 
have, but to give, her possessions, herself ” 

There came a knocking at the door and Constance 
sprang back to her chair, catching up her sewing, 
thrusting in her needle with shortened breath, not to 
be caught by her severe Plymouth neighbours in so 
unseemly a thing as betraying love for her father, 
leaning on his knee. 

Mr. Hopkins answered the summons, and there 
entered Francis Eaton, Mr. Allerton, and John How- 
land, who having come to Plymouth as the servant of 
Governor Carver, was now living in the colony with 
his articles of bondage annulled, and was inclined to 
exceed in severity the other Puritans, as one who had 
not long had authority even over himself. 


A PILGRIM MAID 


205 

“ Peace be to you, Mr. Hopkins/’ said John 
Howland, gravely. “Mistress Constantia, I wish 
you a good evening. Sir, we are come to consult you 
as to certain provisions to be made for the winter to 

come, as to care of the sick, should there be many . 

Will that great beast bite ? She seems not to like me, 
and I may say the feeling is mutual; I never could 
bear a beast.” 

“She will not bite you, John; she is but deciding on 
your credentials as set forth in the odour of your 
clothing,” said Mr. Hopkins, smiling. “Down, 
Hecate, good lass! While I am here you may leave 
it to me to see to your dwelling and fireside, old 
trusty!” 

Hecate wagged her whip like tail and instantly lay 
down, her nose on her extended paws, frowning at the 
callers. 

“But what is this, Stephen Hopkins?” demanded 
Francis Eaton, picking up the marred, leather-covered 
great volume which Stephen Hopkins had laid down 
when he had risen. “Shakespeare! Plays! Fie, fie 
upon you, sir! I wot you know this is godless matter, 
and that you are sinning to set the example of such 
reading to your child.” 

Stephen Hopkins’s quick temper blazed; he took a 
step in the speaker’s direction, and Hecate was 
justified in growling at her master’s lead. 

“Zounds! Eaton,” he cried. “I know that an 


206 


A PILGRIM MAID 


Englishman's house is his castle, on whichever side of 
the ocean he builds it, and that I will not brook your 
coming into it to tell me — you to tell me, forsooth! — 
that I am sinning! Look to your own affairs, sir, but 
keep your hands off mine. If you are too ignorant to 
know more of Shakespeare than to think him harmful, 
well, then, sir, you confess to an ignorance that is in 
itself a sin against the Providence that gave us 
poets." 

“As to that, Francis Eaton," said Mr. Allerton, 
“Mr. Hopkins hath the best of it. We who strive 
after the highest virtue do not indulge in worldly 
reading, but there be those among us who would not 
condemn Shakespeare. But what is the noise I hear? 
Permit us to go yonder into your outer room, Mr. 
Hopkins, to satisfy ourselves that worse than play- 
reading is not carried on within this house." 

“Noise? I heard no noise till now, being too much 
occupied to note it, but it is easy to decide upon its 
cause from here, though if you desire to go yonder, or 
to share the play, I'll not prevent you," said Mr. 
Hopkins, his anger mounting. 

“Say, rather, as I seriously fear, that you are too 
accustomed to the sound to note it. I will pass over, 
as unworthy of you and of my profession, the insult 
you proffered me in suggesting that I would bear part 
in a wicked game," said Mr. Allerton, going toward 
the door. 


A PILGRIM MAID 


20 7 

He threw it open with a magnificent gesture and 
stalked through it, followed close by the other two, 
and by Hecate’s growl and Puck’s sharp barking. 

Constance had dropped her work and sat rigidly 
regarding her father with amazed and frightened eyes. 

Stephen Hopkins went after them, purple with 
rage. What they saw was a table marked off at its 
farther end by lines drawn in chalk. At the nearer 
end sat Edward Doty and Edward Lister, the men 
whom Stephen Hopkins had brought over with him 
on the Mayflower to serve him. Beside them sat 
tankards of home-made beer, and a small pile of 
coins lay, one at each man’s right hand. 

Just as Francis Eaton threw open the door, Edward 
Lister leaned forward, balanced a coin carefully 
between his thumb and finger, and shot it forward 
over one of the lines at the other end. 

“Aimed, by St. George! Well shot, Ted!” cried 
Edward Doty. 

“See that thou beatest me not, Ned; thou art a 
better man than me at it,” said Lister, and they both 
took a draught of beer, wiping their lips on their 
sleeve in high satisfaction with the flavour, the game, 
and each other. 

“Shovelboard!” “Shuffleboard !” cried Francis 
Eaton and John Howland together, differing on the 
pronunciation of the obnoxious sport, but one in the 
boundless horror in their voices. 


208 


A PILGRIM MAID 


“Stephen Hopkins, I am profoundly shocked,'' 
said Mr. Allerton, turning with lowering brows upon 
their host. “A man of your standing among us! A 
man of your experience of the world! Well wot you 
that playing of games is forbid among us. That you 
should tolerate it is frightful to consider " 

‘“See here, Isaac Allerton," said Stephen Hopkins, 
stepping so close to his neighbour that Mr. Allerton 
fell back uneasily, “it is a principle among us that 
every man is to follow his conscience. If we have 
thrown off the authority of our old days, an authority 
mind you, that had much to be said for it, and set up 
our own conscience as the sole guide of our actions, 
then how dare you come into my house to reproach 
me for what I consider no wrong-doing? Ted and 
Ned are good fellows, on whose hands leisure hangs 
heavily, since they do not read Shakespeare, as does 
their master, whom equally you condemn. To my 
mind shovelboard is innocent; I have permitted my 
men to play it. Go, if you will, and report to our 
governor this heinous crime of allowing innocent play. 
But on your peril read me no sermon, nor set up your 
opinion in mine own house, for, by my honour, I’ll 
not abide it." 

“ By no will of mine will I report you, my brother," 
said Isaac Allerton, but the gleam in his eye belied 
him; there was jealousy in this little community, as 
in all human communities. “You know that my 


A PILGRIM MAID 


209 


duty will compel me to lay before Governor Bradford 
what I have seen. Since we have with our own eyes 
seen it, there needs no further witnesses/’ 

“ Imply that I would deny the truth, were there 
never a witness, and Heaven help you, Plymouth or 
no Plymouth, brother or no brother! I’m not a liar,” 
cried Stephen Hopkins, so fiercely that Mr. Allerton 
and his companions went swiftly out the side door, 
Mr. Allerton protesting: 

“Nay, then Brother and friend; thou art a choleric 
man, and lax as to this business, but no one would 
doubt your honour.” 

After they had gone Mr. Hopkins went back to his 
chair by the fireside, leaving Ted and Ned staring 
open-mouthed at each other, stunned by the tempest 
aroused by their game. 

“Well, rather would I have held the psalm book 
the whole evening than got the master into trouble,” 
said Ted. 

“Easy done, since thou couldst no more than hold 
it, reading being beyond thee,” grinned Ned. “Yet 
am I one with thy meaning, which is clearer to me 
than is print.” 

Constance dared not speak to her father when he 
returned to her. She glanced up at his angry face 
and went on with her stitchery in silence. 

At length he stretched himself out, his feet well 
toward the fire, and let his right hand fall on Hecate’s 


210 A PILGRIM MAID 

insinuating head, his left on Puck’s thrusting 
nose. 

“Good friends!” he said to the happy dogs. “I 
am ashamed, my Constance, so to have afflicted thee. 
Smile, child; thou dost look as though destruction 
awaited me.” 

“I am so sorry, Father! In good sooth, is there not 
trouble coming to you from this night’s business?” 
asked Constance, folding up her work. 

“Nothing serious, child; likely a fine. But indeed 
it will be worth it to have the chance it will buy me to 
speak my mind clearly to my fellow colonists on 
these matters. Ah, my girl, my girl, what sad fools 
we mortals be, as Shakspeare, whom also these grave 
and reverend seigniors condemn, hath said! We 
have come here to sail by the free wind of conscience, 
but look you, it must be the conscience of the few, 
greater thraldom than it was in the Old World! 
Ah, Constance, Constance, we came here to escape 
the thraldom of men, but to do that it needs that no 
men came! If authority^we are to have, then let it 
be authoritative, say I; not the mere opinion of men. 
My child, have you ever noted how much human 
nature there is in a man?” 

But the next day, during which Stephen Hopkins 
was absent from his home, when he returned at night 
his philosophy had been sadly jostled. 

He had been called before the governor, repri- 


21 1 


A PILGRIM MAID 

manded and fined, and his pride, his sense of justice, 
were both outraged when he actually had to meet the 
situation. Dame Eliza was in a state of mind that 
made matters worse. She had heard from one of 
those persons through whom ill news filters as 
naturally as water through a spring, that her husband 
had been, as she termed it, “ disgraced before the 
world.” 

“They can’t disgrace him, Stepmother,” protested 
Constance, though she knew that it was useless to 
try to stem the tide of Dame Eliza’s grievance. 
“My father is in the right; they have the power to 
fine, but not to disgrace him who hath done no 
wrong.” 

“Of course he hath done no wrong,” snapped 
Dame Eliza. “Shovelboard was played in my 
father’s kitchen when I was no age. Are these 
prating men better than my father? Answer me 
that! But your father has no right to risk getting 
into trouble for two ne’er-do-wells, like his two 
precious Edwards. They eat more than any four 
men I ever knew, and that will I maintain against all 
comers, and as to work they cannot so much as see it. 
Worthless! And for them will he risk our good 
name. For mark me, Constantia, shovelboard is a 
game, and gaming an abomination, and not to be 
mentioned in a virtuous household, yet would your 
father permit it played ” 


212 


A PILGRIM MAID 


“But you just said it was harmless, and that your 
father had a table !” cried Constance. 

“My father was a good man, but not a Puritan,” 
said Dame Eliza, somewhat confused to be called 
upon to harmonize her own statements. “In Eng- 
land shovelboard is one thing; in Plymouth a second 
thing, and two things are not the same as one thing. 
I am disgusted with your father, but what good does 
it do me to speak? Never am I heeded but rather 
am I flouted by the Hopkins brood, young and old, 
which is why I never speak, but eat my heart out in 
silence and patience, knowing that had I married as 
I might have married — aye, and that many times, 
I’d have you know — Ed not be here among sands and 
marshes and Indians and barrens, slaving for un- 
grateful people who think to show their better blood 
by treating me as they best know how! But it is a 
long lane that hath no turning, and justice must one 
day be my reward.” 

When Stephen Hopkins came in Dame Eliza dared 
not air her grievances; his angry face compelled 
silence. Even Constance did not intrude upon his 
annoyance, but contented herself with conveying 
her sympathy by waiting upon him and talking 
blithely to Damaris, succeeding at last in winning 
a smile from her father by her amusing stories to the 
child. 

“There is a moon, Constance; is it too cold for you 


A PILGRIM MAID 


213 

to walk with me ? The sea is fair and silvery beneath 
the moon rays,” said Mr. Hopkins after supper. 

“Not a whit too chill, Father, and I shall like to be 
out of doors,” cried Constance, disregarding her step- 
mother’s frown, who disapproved of pleasure strolls. 

Constance drew her cloak about her, its deep 
hood over her head, and went out with her father. 
Stephen Hopkins placed her hand in his arm, and led 
her toward the beach. It was a deep, clear autumn 
night, the moon was brilliant; the sea, still as a 
mirror, gave its surface for the path that led from 
the earth to the moon, made by the moon rays. 

At last her father spoke to Constance. 

“Wise little woman,” he said, patting the hand in 
his arm, “to keep silent till a man has conquered his 
humours. Your mother had that rare feminine 
wisdom. What a comrade was she, my dear! See- 
ing your profile thus half-concealed by your hood I 
have been letting myself feel that she had returned to 
me. And so she has, for you are part of her, her gift 
to me! Trouble no more over my annoyance, 
Constance; I have conquered it. I do not say that 
there is no soreness left in me, that I should be thus 
dealt with, but I am philosopher enough to see 
that Myles Standish was right when he once said to 
me that I was a fool for my pains; that living in Ply- 
mouth I must bear myself Plymouth-wise.” 

“Father, have you had enough of impertinence in 


A PILGRIM MAID 


214 

the day’s doings, that your neighbours should dare to 
judge you, or will you tolerate a little more im- 
pertinence, and from your own daughter?” asked 
Constance. 

“Now what’s in the wind?” demanded Stephen 
Hopkins, stopping short. 

“Nay, Father, let me speak freely!” Constance 
implored. “Indeed there is nothing in my heart 
that you would disapprove, could I bare it to your 
eyes. Does not this day’s experience throw a light 
upon Giles?” 

“Giles! How? Why?” exclaimed her father. 

“Giles is as like you as are two peas in a pod, dear 
Father. He does not count himself a boy any longer. 
He hath felt that he was dealt with for offences that 
he had not done. He has been wounded, angry, 
sore, sad — and most of all because he half worships 
you. The governor, Mr. Winslow, no one is to you, 
nor can hurt you, as you can hurt Giles. Don’t 
you feel to-day, Father, how hard it is for a young lad 
to bear injustice? When Giles comes home will you 
not show him that you trust him, love him, as I so 
well know you do, but as he cannot now be made to 
believe you do? And won’t you construe him by 
what you have suffered this day, and comfort him? 
Forgive me, Father, my dearest, dearest! I do not 
mean wrong, and after all it is only your Constance 
speaking her heart out to you,” she pleaded. 


A PILGRIM MAID 


215 


For upwards of ten minutes Stephen Hopkins was 
silent while Constance hung trembling on his arm. 

Then her father turned to her, and took her face 
in both his hands, tears in his eyes. 

“It is only my Constance speaking; only my dear- 
est earthly treasure/’ he said. “And by all the gods, 
she hath spoken sweetly and truly, and I will heed 
her! Yes, my Constance, I will read my own bitter- 
ness in Giles’s heart, and I will heal it, if but the lad 
comes back safe to us.” 

With which promise, that sounded in Constance’s 
ears like the carol of angels, her father kissed her 
thrice on brow, and lips, a most unusual caress from 
him. It was a thankful Constance that lay down 
beside Damaris that night, beneath the lean-to roof. 

“Now I know that Giles will come back, for this 
is what has been meant in all that hath lately come 
to us,” was her last thought as she drifted into sleep. 


CHAPTER XV 


The “Fortune,” that Sailed, First West, then 
East 

T HERE’S a ship, there’s a sail standing toward 
us!” 

It was Francis Billington’s shrill boyish voice that 
aroused the Hopkins household with this tidings, 
early in the morning on one of those mid-November 
days when at that hour the air was chill and at noon 
the warmth of summer brooded over land and sea. 

Stephen Hopkins called from within: “Wait, wait, 
Francis, till I can come to thee.” 

In a moment or two he came out of his door and 
looked in the direction in which the boy pointed, al- 
though a hillock on the Hopkins land, which lay 
between Leyden and Middle streets, cut off the sight 
of the sail. 

“She’s coming up from the south’ard,” cried 
Francis, excitedly. “Most like from the Cape, but 
she must have come from England first, say you not 
so, Mr. Hopkins?” 

“Surely,” agreed Stephen Hopkins. “The sav- 
ages build no vessels like ours, as you well know. 
3l6 


A PILGRIM MAID 217 

Thank you, my boy, for warning me of her approach. 
Go on and spread your news broadcast; let our entire 
community be out to welcome whatever good the 
ship brings, or to resist harm — though that I fear 
not. I will myself be at the wharf when she gets in.” 

“Oh, as to that, Mr. Hopkins, you have time to eat 
as big a breakfast as you can get and still be too early 
for the arrival,” said Francis, grinning. “She’s got a 
long way to cover and a deal to do to reach Plymouth 
wharf in this still air. She’s not close in, by much. 
I hurried and yelled to get you up quick because — 
well, because you’ve got to hurry folks and yell when 
a ship comes in, haven’t you?” 

Mr. Hopkins smiled sympathetically at the boy 
whose actions rarely got sympathy. 

“Till ships become a more common sight in our 
harbour, Francis, I would advise letting your excite- 
ment on the coming of one have vent a-plenty,” 
he said, turning to reenter the house as Francis 
Billington, acting on advice more promptly than was 
his wont, ran down Leyden Street, throwing up his 
cap and shouting: “A ship! A sail! A ship! A sail!” 
at the top of his vigorous lungs, not only unreproved 
for his disturbance of the peaceful morning, but 
hailed with answering excitement by the men, women, 
and children whom he aroused as he ran. 

The ship took as long to reach haven as Francis 
Billington had prophesied she would require. She 


2l8 


A PILGRIM MAID 


proved to be a small ship with a figure-head of a 
woman, meant to represent Fortune, for she was 
blindfolded, but her battered paint indicated that 
she had in her own person encountered ill-fortune 
in her course. 

A number of people were gathered on her forward 
deck, looking eagerly for indications of the sort of 
place that they were approaching. 

“Mr. Weston, knowing that we depend upon him 
and his brother merchants, our friends across seas, 
for supplies, hath at last dispatched us the long- 
waited ship/’ said Mr. Winslow to Mr. Hopkins. 

“With someone, let us hope, authorized to carry 
back report of us here, and thus to get us, later on, 
what we sore need. Many new colonists, as well as 
nearly all things that human beings require for ex- 
istence, said Stephen Hopkins, with something of 
the strain upon his endurance that he had suffered 
getting into his voice. 

The ship was the Fortune — her figure-head had 
announced as much. When she made anchor, and 
her small boat came to the wharf, the first person 
to step ashore was Mr. Robert Cushman, the English 
agent who had played so large a part in the embarka- 
tion of the pilgrims in the Mayflower . 

“Welcome, in all truth!” said Governor Bradford 
stepping forward to seize the hand of this man, from 
whose coming and subsequent reports at home so 


A PILGRIM MAID 


219 


much might be hoped. “Now, at last, have we what 
we have so long needed, a representative who can 
speak of us as one who hath seen!” 

“I am glad to be here in a twofold sense, Mr. 
Bradford,” returned Mr. Cushman. 

“Glad to meet with you, whom I knew under the 
distant sky of home, glad to be at the end of my voy- 
age. I have brought you thirty-five additional mem- 
bers of your community. We came first to Cape 
Cod, and a more discouraged band of adventurers 
would be hard to find than were these men when they 
saw how barren of everything was the Cape. I as- 
sured them that they would find you in better condi- 
tion here, at Plymouth, and we set sail hither. They 
have been scanning waves and sky for the first symp- 
tom of something like comfort at Plymouth, begin- 
ning their anxious outlook long before it was possible 
to satisfy it. I assure you that never was a wharf 
hailed so gladly as was this one that you have built, 
for these men argued that before you would build a 
wharf you must have made sure of greater essentials.” 

“We are truly thankful for new strength added 
to us; we need it sore,” said William Bradford. “We 
make out to live, nor have we wanted seriously, thus 
far.” 

“The men I have gathered together and brought 
to you are not provided; they will be a charge upon 
you for a while in food and raiment, but after a time 


220 


A PILGRIM MAID 


their strength should more than recompense you in 
labour,” said Mr. Cushman. “Where is the gov- 
ernor? I have a letter here from Mr. Weston to 
Governor Carver; will you take me to him?” 

“That we may not do, Mr. Cushman,” said Gov- 
ernor Bradford, sadly. “Governor Carver is at rest 
since last April, a half year agone. It was a day of 
summer heat and he was labouring in the field, from 
which he came out very sick, complaining greatly 
of his head. He lay down and in a few hours his 
senses failed, which never returned to him till his 
death, some days later. Bitterly have we mourned 
that just man. And but a month and somewhat 
more, passed when Mistress Carver, who was a weak 
woman, and sore beset by the sufferings of her coming 
here, and so ill-fitted to bear grief, followed her spouse 
to their reward, as none who knew them could doubt. 
I am chosen, unworthily, to succeed John Carver as 
governor of this colony.” 

“Then is the letter thine, William Bradford, and 
the Plymouth men have wisely picked out thee to 
hold chief office over them,” said Robert Cushman. 
“Yet your news is heavy hearing, and I hope there is 
not much of such tidings to be given me.” 

“Half of us lie yonder on the hillside,” said Gov- 
ernor Bradford. “But they died in the first months 
of our landing, when we lacked shelter and all else. 
It was a mortality that assailed us, a swift plague, 


A PILGRIM MAID 


221 


but since it hath passed there is little sickness among 
us. Gather your men and let us go on to the village 
which we have built us, a habitation in the wilder- 
ness, like Israel of old. Like old Plymouth at home 
it is in name, but in naught else, yet it is not wholly 
without its pleasant comfort, and we are learning to 
hold it dear, as Providence hath wisely made man to 
cherish his home.” 

Mr. Cushman marshalled his sorry-looking fol- 
lowers; they were destitute of bedding, household 
utensils, even scantily provided with clothes, so that 
they came off the Fortune in the lightest marching 
order, and filled with dismay the Plymouth people 
who saw that their deficiencies would fall upon the 
first settlers to supply. 

“Well, Constantia, and so hath it ever been, and 
ever will be, world without end, that they who till 
and sow do not reap, but rather some idle blackbird 
that sits upon a stump whistling for the corn that 
grows for him, and not for his betters,” scolded 
Dame Eliza who, like others of the women who were 
hard-working and economical, felt especially ag- 
grieved by this invoice of destitution. “It is we, 
and such as we who may feed them, even to Damaris. 
Get a pan of dried beans, child, and shell ’em, for it is 
against our profession to see them starve, but why 
the agents sent, or Robert Cushman brought, beggars 
to us it would puzzle Solomon to say. Where will 


222 


A PILGRIM MAID 


your warm cloak come from that you hoped for, think 
you, Constantia, with these people requiring our 
stores ? Do they take Plymouth for Beggars’ Bush ? ” 

“I came hither walking beside my father, who was 
talking with Mr. Winslow, Stepmother,” said Con- 
stance, noting with amusement that her stepmother 
commiserated her probable sacrifice, swayed by her 
indignation to make common cause with Constance, 
whose desires she rarely noted. “They said that it 
would put a burden upon us to provide for these new- 
comers at first, but that they looked like able and 
hopeful subjects to requite us abundantly, and that 
soon. So never mind my cloak; I will darn and patch 
my old one, and at least there be none here who 
will not know why I go shabby, and be in similar 
stress.” 

The door opened and Humility Cooper entered. 
She kissed Constance on the cheek, a manner of 
greeting not common among these Puritan maidens, 
especially when they met often, and slowly took the 
stool that Constance placed for her in the chimney 
corner, loosening her cape as she did so. 

“I have news, dear Constance,” Humility said. 

“How strangely you look at me, Humility!” cried 
Constance. “Is your news good or ill? Your face 
would tell me it was both; your eyes shine, yet are 
ready to tears, and your lips droop, yet are smiling!” 

“My news is that same mixture, Constance,” cried 


A PILGRIM MAID 223 

Humility. “I am sent for from England. The 
letter is come by the Fortune. She is to lie in our 
harbour barely two sen’ nights, and then weigh 

anchor for home. And I ” 

“You go on her!” cried Constance. “Oh Humil- 
ity!” 

“And so I do,” said Humility. “I am glad to go 
home. It is a sad and heavy-hearted thing to be 
here alone, with only Elizabeth Tilley, my cousin, 
left me. To be sure her father and mother, and 
Edward Tilley and his wife, who brought me hither, 
were but my cousins, though one degree nearer than 
John Tilley’s Betsy; yet was it kindred, and they were 
those who had me in charge. Since they died I 
have felt lone, kind though everyone hath been; 
you and Priscilla Mullins Alden and Elizabeth are 
like my sisters. But my heart yearns back to Eng- 
land. Yet when I think of seeing you for the last 
time, till we meet beyond all parting, since you will 
never go to the old land, nor I return to the new one, 
then it seems that it will break my heart to say fare- 
well, and that I cannot go.” 

“Why, Humility, dear lass, we cannot let you go!” 
cried Constance, putting her arms around the 
younger girl toward whom she felt as a protector, as 
well as comrade. 

“Tut, tut!” said Dame Eliza, yet not unkindly. 
“It is best for Humility to go. I have long been glad 


A PILGRIM MAID 


224 

to know, what we did know, that her kindred at home 
would send for her.” 

Humility stooped and gathered up Lady Fair, the 
cat, on her knee. 

“I am like her,” she said. “The warmth I have 
holds me, and I like not to venture out into the chill- 
some wet of the dark and storm.” 

“Lady Fair would scamper home fast enough if she 
were among strangers, in a new place, Humility,” 
cried Constance, with one of her mercurial changes 
setting herself to cheer Humility on her unavoidable 
road. “It will be hard setting out, but you will be 
glad enough when you see the green line of shore that 
will be England awaiting you!” 

“I thought you would be sorry, Constance!” cried 
Humility, tears springing to her eyes and rolling down 
her smooth, pink cheeks. 

“And am I not, dear heart, just because I want to 
make it easier for you?” Constance reproached 
her. “How I shall miss you, dear little trusting 
Humility, I cannot tell you. But I am glad to know 
that we who remain are worse off than you who go, 
and that when you see home again there will be more 
than enough there to make up to you for Pris, Eliza- 
beth, and me. There will be ships coming after this, 
so my father and Mr. Winslow were saying, and you 
will write us, and we will write you. And some day, 
when Oceanus, or Peregrine White, or one of the 


A PILGRIM MAID 


225 

other small children here, is grown up to be a great 
portrait painter, like Mr. Holbein, whose portraits 
I was taken to see at Windsor when I was small, I 
will dispatch to you a great canvas of an old lady in 
flowing skirts, with white hair puffed and coifed 
and it will be painted across the bottom in readable 
letters: ‘Portrait of Constantia Hopkins, aetat. 86/ 
else will you never know it for me, the silly girl you 
left behind.” 

“ ‘Silly girl/ indeed ! You will be the wife of some 
great gentleman who is now in England, but who will 
cross to the colony, and you will be the mother of 
those who will help in its growth,” cried Humility 
the prophetess. 

“Cease your foolish babble, both of you!” Dame 
Eliza ordered them, impatiently. “It is poor business 
talking of serious matters lightly, but Humility is 
well-off, and needs not pity, to be returning to the 
land that we cast off, nor am I as Lot’s wife saying it, 
for it is true, nor am I repining.” 

Humility had made a correct announcement in say- 
ing that the Fortune would stay on the western shore 
but two weeks. 

For that time she lay in the waters of Plymouth 
harbour taking on a cargo of goods to the value of 
500 pounds, or thereabout, which the Plymouth 
people rightly felt would put their enterprise in a 
new light when the ship arrived in England, especially 


226 


A PILGRIM MAID 


that she had come hither unprepared for trade, ex- 
pecting no such store here. 

Lumber they stowed upon the Fortune to her ut- 
most capacity to carry, and two hogsheads full of 
beaver and otter skins, taken in exchange for the 
little that the Englishmen had to offer for them, the 
idea of trading for furs being new to them, till 
Squanto showed them the value in a beaver skin. 

On the night of the thirteenth day of the Fortune’s 
lying at anchor Humility went aboard to be ready in 
case that the ship’s master should suddenly resolve to 
take advantage of a favourable wind and sail un- 
expectedly. 

Stephen Hopkins offered to take the young girls, 
who had been Humility’s companions on the May- 
flower, out to the Fortune early the next morning for 
the final parting. It was decided that the Fortune 
was to set sail at the turn of the tide on the fourteenth 
day, and drop down to sea on the first of its ebb. 

Priscilla, Elizabeth Tilley, Desire Minter, who was 
also to return to England when summoned, and 
Constance, were rowed out to the ship when the red- 
dening east threw a glory upon the Fortune and 
covered her battered, blindfolded figure-head with 
the robes of an aurora. 

Humility was dressed, awaiting them. She threw 
herself into the arms of each of the girls in succession, 
and for once five young girls were silent, their chatter 


A PILGRIM MAID 


227 

hushed by the solemn thought that never would their 
eyes rest again upon Humility’s pleasant little face; 
that never again would Humility see the faces which 
had smiled her through her days of bereavement, see 
Constance who had nursed her back to life when she 
herself seemed likely to follow her protectors to the 
hillside, to their corn-hidden graves. 

“We cannot forget, so we will not ask each other 
to remember, Humility dear,” whispered Constance, 
her lips against Humility’s soft, brown hair. 

Humility shook her head, unable otherwise to 
reply. 

“I love you more than any one on earth, Con,” she 
managed to say at last. 

“I am sorry to shorten your stay, daughters, sorry 
to compel you to leave Mistress Humility,” said Mr. 
Cushman, coming down the deck to the plaintive 
group, “but we are sailing now, and there will be 
no time when the last good-bye is easy. You must 
go ashore.” 

Not a word was spoken as Priscilla, Desire — ■ 
though for her the parting was not final — Elizabeth 
and Constance kissed, clung to Humility, and for ever 
let her go. Stephen Hopkins, not a little moved 
himself — for he was fond of Humility, over whom he 
had kept ward since Edward Tilley had died — guided 
the tear-blinded girls down the ship’s ladder, into 
his boat, and rowed them ashore. 


228 


A PILGRIM MAID 


The Fortune's sails creaked and her gear rattled 
as her men hauled up her canvas for her homeward 
voyage. 

She weighed anchor and slowly moved on her first 
tack, bright in the golden sunshine of a perfect 
Indian summer morning. 

“Be brave, and wave a gay farewell to the little 
lass,” said Stephen Hopkins. “And may God fend 
her from harm on her way, and lead her over still 
waters all her days.” 

“Oh, amen, amen, Father!” sobbed Constance. 
“She can’t see we are crying while we wave to her 
so blithely. But it is the harder part to stay be- 
hind.” 

“With me, my lass?” asked Stephen Hopkins, 
smiling tenderly down on his usually courageous 
little pioneer. 

“Oh, no; no indeed! Forgive me, Father! The 
one hard thing would be to stay anywhere without 
thee,” cried Constance, smiling as brightly as she 
had just wept bitterly. The Fortune leaned over 
slightly, and sailed at a good speed down the harbour, 
Humility’s white signal of farewell hanging out over 
the boat’s stern, discernable long after the girl’s plump 
little figure and pink round face, all washed white 
with tears, had been blotted out by intervening space. 

Before the Fortune had gone wholly out of sight 
Francis Billington came over the marsh grass that 


A PILGRIM MAID 


229 

edged the sand, sometimes running for a few steps, 
sometimes lagging; his whole figure and air eloquent 
of catastrophe. 

“What can ail Francis Billington? ,, exclaimed 
Stephen Hopkins. 

“He looks ghastly,” cried Constance. “Father, 
it can’t be — Giles?” she whispered. 

“Bad news of him!” cried her father quickly, 
turning pale. “Nonsense, no; of course not.” 

Nevertheless he strode toward the boy hastily 
and caught him by the arm. 

“What aileth thee; speak!” he ordered him. 

“Jack. Jack is — Jack ” Francis stammered. 

“Oh, is it Jack?” cried Stephen Hopkins, relieved, 
though he could have struck himself a moment later 
for the seeming heartlessness of his excusable mis- 
take. 

“What has Jack done now? He is always getting 
into mischief, but I am sure you need have no fear 

for him. But now that I look at you . Why, my 

poor lad, what is it? No harm hath befallen your 
brother?” 

“Jack is dead,” said Francis. 

Constance uttered a cry, and her father fell back 
a step or two, shocked and sorry. 

“Forgive me, Francis; I had no notion of this. I 
never thought John Billington, the younger, could 
come to actual harm — so daring, so reckless, but so 


A PILGRIM MAID 


230 

strong and able to take care of himself! Dead! 
Francis, it can’t be. You are mistaken. Where is 
Doctor Fuller?” 

“ With my father,” said Francis, and they saw that 
he shook from head to foot. 

“He was with Jack; he did what he could. He 
couldn’t do more,” said Francis. 

“Poor lad,” said Stephen Hopkins, laying his hand 
gently on the boy’s shoulder. 

“Do you want to tell us? Was it an accident?’’ 
Francis nodded. “Bouncing Bully,” he muttered. 
Stephen Hopkins glanced questioningly at Con- 
stance; he thought perhaps Francis was wandering 
in his mind. 

“That was poor Jack’s great pistol that he took 
such pride in,” cried Constance. 

“Oh, Francis, did that kill him?” 

“Burst,” cried Francis, and said no more. 

“Come home with us, Francis,” said Mr. Hopkins. 
“Indeed, my boy, I am heartily sorry for thee, and 
wish I could comfort thee. Be brave, and bear it in 
the way that thou hast been taught.” 

“I liked Jack,” said poor Francis, turning away. 
“I thank you, Mr. Hopkins, but I’d not care to go 

home with you. If Giles was back . Not that I 

don’t love you, Con, but Jack and Giles . I’m go- 

ing — somewhere. I guess I’ll find Nimrod, my dog. 
Thank you, Mr. Hopkins, but I couldn’t come. I 


A PILGRIM MAID 231 

forgot why I came here. Doctor Fuller told me to 

say he wanted you. It’s about Jack — Jack's . 

They'll bury him." 

The boy turned away, staggering, but in a moment 
Constance and her father, watching him, saw him 
break into a run and disappear. 

“Don't look so worried, my dear," said Stephen 
Hopkins. “It is a boy's instinct to hide his grief, 
and the dog will be a good comrade for Francis for 
awhile. Later we will get hold of him. Best leave 
him to himself awhile. That wild, unruly Jack! 
And he is dead! I’d rather a hundred pounds were 
lost than that I had spoken as I did to Francis at 
first, but how should I have dreamed it was more 
than another of the Billington scrapes? I tell thee, 
Connie, it will be a rare mercy if the father does not 
end badly one day. He is insubordinate, lawless, 
dangerous. Perhaps young John is saved a worse 
fate." 

“Nevertheless I am sad enough over the fate that 
has befallen him," said Constance. “ He was a kindly 
boy, and loyal enough to me to make it right that I 
should mourn him. And I did like him. Poor Jack. 
Poor, young, heedless Jack! And how proud he 
was of that clumsy weapon that hath turned on 
him!" 

“And so did I like him, Connie, though he and 
Francis have been, from our first embarkation on the 


A PILGRIM MAID 


232 

Mayflower , the torment and black sheep of our com- 
pany. But I liked the boy. I like his father less, and 
fear he will one day force us to deal with him ex- 
tremely.” In which prophecy Stephen Hopkins 
was only too right. 

“To think that in one day we should bid a last 
farewell to two of our young fellow-exiles, Humility 
and Jack, both gone home, and for ever from us! 
Giles liked Jack; Jack stood by him when he needed 
help. Oh, Father, Father, if it were Giles!” cried 
Constance. 

“I know, I know, child,” said her father, huskily. 
“I’ve been thinking that. I’ve been thinking that, 
and more. My son has been headstrong, but never 
wicked. He is stiffnecked, but hath no evil in his 
will, except that he resists me. But I have been 
thinking hard, my Constance. You were right; I 
would have done well to listen to your pleadings, to 
your wiser understanding of my boy. I have been 
hard on him, unjust to him; I should have admitted 
him to my confidence, given mine to him. I am 
wrong and humbly I confess it to you, Giles’s advo- 
cate. When he comes back my boy shall find a better 
father awaiting him. I wounded him through his 
very love for me, and well I know how once he loved 
me.” 

“Oh, Father; dear, good, great Father!” cried 
Constance, forgetful of all grief. “Only a great man 


A PILGRIM MAID 233 

can thus acknowledge a mistake. My dear, dear, 
beloved Father !” And in her heart she thought 
perhaps poor Jack had not died in vain if his death 
helped to show their father how dear Giles was to 
him, still, and after all. 


CHAPTER XVI 


A Gallant Lad Withal 
HERE was a gray sky the day after young mad- 



JL cap John Billington was laid to rest in the grave 
that had been hard to think of as meant for him, dug 
by the younger colonists. Long rifted clouds lay 
piled upon one another from the line of one horizon 
to the other, and the wind blew steadily, keeping 
close to the ground and whistling around chimneys 
and rafters in a way that portended a storm driven 
in from the sea. 

“I think it’s lost-and-lone to-day, Constance,” 
said Damaris, coining her own term for the melan- 
choly that seemed to envelop earth and sky. “I 
think it’s a good day for a story, and I’d like much 
to sit in your lap in the chimney corner and hear 
your nicest ones.” 

“Would you, my Cosset? But you said a story 
at first, and now you say my nicest ones ! Do you 
mean one story, or several stories, Damaris?” Con- 
stance asked. 

“I mean one first, and many ones after that, if 
you could tell them, Constance,” said the child. 


234 


A PILGRIM MAID 


235 

“Mother says we have no time to idle in story- 
telling, but to-day is so empty and lonesome! I'd 
like to have a story.” 

“And so you shall, my little sis!” cried Constance 
gathering Damaris into her arms and dropping into 
the high-backed chair which Dame Eliza preempted 
for herself, when she was there; but now she was not 
at home. “Come, at least the fire is gay! Hark 
how it snaps and sings! And how gaily red and 
golden are the flames, and how the great log glows! 
Shall we play it is a red-coated soldier, fighting the 
chill for us?” 

“No, oh, no,” shuddered Damaris. “Don't play 
about fighting and guns!” 

Constance cuddled her closer, drawing her head 
into the hollow of her shoulder. Sensitive, grave 
little Damaris had been greatly unnerved by the 
death of Jack, and especially that his own pistol had 
taken his life. 

“We'll play that the red glow is loving kindness, 
and that we have had our eyes touched with magic 
that makes us able to see love,” cried Constance. 
“Fire is the emblem of love, warming our hearts 
toward all things, so our fancy will be at once make- 
believe and truth. Remember, my cosset lamb, 
that love is around us, whether we see it or not, and 
that there can be no dismal gray days if we have our 
eyes touched to see the glow of love warming us! 


A PILGRIM MAID 


236 

Now what shall the story be? Here in the hearth 
corner, shall it be Cinderella? Or shall it be the 
story of the lucky bear, that found a house empty and 
a fire burning when he wanted a home, and wherein 
he set up housekeeping for himself, like the quality ? ” 

“All of them, Constance! But first tell me what 
we shall do when Giles comes home. I like that 
story best. I wish he would come soon!” sighed 
Damaris. 

“Ah, so do I! And so he will;” Constance cor- 
rected instantly the pain that she knew had escaped 
into her voice. “Captain Standish will not risk the 
coming of cold weather; he will bring them home 
soon. Well, what shall we do then, you want to 
hear? First of all, someone will come running, call- 
ing to us that the shallop hath appeared below in the 
harbour. Then we shall all make ourselves fine, 
and ” 

“Someone is coming now, Con, but not running,” 
cried Damaris, sitting up and holding up a warning 
finger. 

“It is a man's step,” began Constance, but, as the 
door opened she sprang to her feet with a cry, and 
stood for an instant of stunned joy holding Damaris 
clasped to her breast. Then she set the child on her 
feet and leaped into Giles’s arms, with a great sob, 
repeating his name and clinging to him. 

“Steady, Constance! Steady, dear lass,” cried 


A PILGRIM MAID 


237 

Giles, himself in not much better state, while Dama- 
ris clung around his waist and frantically kissed the 
tops of his muddy boots. 

“Oh, how did you get here? When did you come? 
Are they all safely here? ,, cried Constance. 

“Every man of them; we had a fine expedition, 
not a misfortune, perfect weather, and we saw won- 
ders of noble country: streams and hills and plains,” 
said Giles, and instantly Constance felt a new man- 
hood and self-confidence in him, steadier, less asser- 
tive than his boyish pride, the self-reliance that is 
won through encountering realities, in conquering 
self and hence things outside of self. 

“I cannot wait to hear the tale! Let me help 
you off with your heavy coat, your matchlock, and 
then sit you down in this warmest corner, and tell 
me everything,” cried Constance, beginning to re- 
cover herself, the rich colour of her delight flooding 
her face as, the first shock of surprise over, she real- 
ized that it was indeed Giles come back to her and 
that her secret anxiety for him was past. “Art 
hungry, my own?” she added, fluttering around her 
brother, like a true woman, wanting first of all to 
feed him. 

“Well, Con, to be truthful I am always hungry,” 
said Giles, smiling down on her. 

“But not in such strait now that I cannot wait till 
the next meal.” 


A PILGRIM MAID 


238 

“Here are our father and Mistress Hopkins, has- 
tening hither,” said Constance, looking out the door, 
hoping for this coming of her father. “You have 
not seen Father yet?” 

“No, Con; I came straight home, but the captain 
has met with him, I am sure. And, Con, I want to 
tell you before he comes in, that I have seen how 
wrong I was toward our good father, and that I hope 
to carry myself dutifully toward him henceforth.” 

Constance clasped her hands, rapturously, but had 
not time to reply before the door was thrown wide 
open and Stephen Hopkins strode in, his face radiant. 

He went up to his tall son and clasped his shoulders 
in a grip that made Giles wince, and said through his 
closed teeth, trying to steady his voice: 

“My lad, my fine son, thank God I have you back! 
And by His mercy never again shall we be parted, 
nor sundered by the least sundering.” 

Giles looked up, and Giles looked down. He 
hoped, yet hardly dared to think, that his father 
meant more than mere bodily separation. 

“I am glad enough to be here, yet we had glorious 
days, and have seen a country so worthy that we 
wish that we might go thither, leaving this less pro- 
fitable country,” said Giles. “We have seen land 
that by a little effort would be turned into gracious 
meadows. We have seen great bays and rivers, 
full of fish, capable of navigation and industry. 


A PILGRIM MAID 239 

We have seen a beautiful river, which we have 
named the Charles, for we think it to be that river 
which Captain John Smith thus named in his map. 
The Charles flows down to the sea, past three hills 
which top a noble harbour, and where we would 
dearly like to build a town. I will tell you of these 
things in order. Captain Myles will have a meeting 
of the Plymouth people to hear our tale; I would 
wait for that, else will it be stale hearing to you.” 

“Nay, Giles, we shall never tire of it!” cried Con- 
stance. “A good story is the better for oft hearing, 
as you know well, do you not, little Damaris?” 

“Well, it hath made a man of thee, Giles Hopkins,” 
said Dame Eliza who had silently watched the lad 
closely as he talked. “It was a lucky thing for thee 
that the Arm of the Colony, Captain Myles, took 
thee for one of his tools.” 

“A lucky thing for him, too,” interposed Giles’s 
father proudly. “I have seen Myles; he hath told 
me how, when you and he were fallen behind your 
companions, investigating a deep ravine, he had 
slipped and would have been killed by his own match- 
lock as it struck against the rock, but that you, risk- 
ing your life, threw yourself forward on a narrow 
ledge and struck up the muzzle of the gun. The 
colony is in your debt, my son, that your arm warded 
death from the man it calls, justly, its Arm.” 

“Prithee, father!” expostulated Giles, turning 


240 


A PILGRIM MAID 


crimson. “Who could do less for a lesser man? 
And who would not do far more for Myles Standish ? 
I would be a fool to hesitate over risk to a life no more 
valuable than mine, if such as he were in danger. 
Besides which the captain exaggerates my danger. I 
don’t want that prated here. Please help me silence 
Myles Standish.” 

Stephen Hopkins nodded in satisfaction. 

“Right, Giles. A blast on one’s own horn produces 
much the sound of the bray of an ass. Yet am I glad 
that I know of this,” he said. 

Little Love Brewster, who was often a messenger 
from one Plymouth house to another, came running 
in at that moment. 

“My father sends me,” he panted. “The men of 
Plymouth are to sit this afternoon at our house to 
hear the tale of the adventurers to the Massachusetts. 
You will come? Giles, did you bring us new kinds 
of arrows from the strange savages ? My father saith 
that Squanto was the best guide and helper on this 
expedition that white men ever had.” 

“So he was, Love. I brought no new arrows, but I 
have in my sack something for each little lad in the 
colony. And for the girls I have wondrous beads,” 
added Giles, seeing Damaris’s crestfallen face. 

“I will risk a reprimand; it can be no worse than 
disapproval from Elder Brewster, and belike they 
will spare me because of the occasion,” thought 


A PILGRIM MAID 


241 

Constance in her own room, making ready to go to 
the assembly that was to gather to welcome the 
explorers, but which to her mind was gathered chiefly 
to honour Giles. 

Thus deliberately she violated the rule of the 
colony; let her beautiful hair curl around her flushed 
face; put on a collar of her mother’s finest lace, tied 
in such wise by a knot of rose-coloured ribbon that it 
looked like a cluster of buds under her decided little 
chin. And, surveying herself in the glass, which was 
over small and hazy for her merits, that chin raised 
itself in a hitch of defiance. 

“Why should I not be young, and fair and happy?” 
Constance demanded of her unjust reflection. “At 
the worst, and if I am forced to remove it, I shall have 
been gay and bonny — a wee bit so! — for a little 
while.” 

With which this unworthy pilgrim maid danced 
down the stairs, seized by the hand Damaris, who 
looked beside her like a small brown grub, and set 
out for Elder Brewster’s house. 

Although the older women raised disapproving 
brows at Constance, and shook their heads over her 
rose-tinted knots of ribbon, no one openly reproved 
her, and she slid into her place less pleased with her 
ornamentation than she had been while anticipating 
a rebuke. 

Captain Myles Standish rose up in his place and 


A PILGRIM MAID 


242 

gave the history of his explorations in a clear-cut, 
terse way, that omitted nothing, yet dwelt on noth- 
ing beyond the narration of necessary facts. 

It was a long story, however condensed, yet no one 
wearied of it, but listened enthralled to his account 
of the Squaw-Sachem of the tribe of the Massachu- 
setts, who ruled in the place of her dead spouse, the 
chief Nanepashemet, and was feared by other Indians 
as a relentless foe, and of the great rock that ended a 
promontory far in on the bay, at the foot of the three 
hills which were so good a site for a settlement, a rock 
that was fashioned by Nature into the profile of an 
Indian’s face, and which they called Squaw Rock, or 
Squantum Head. As the captain went on telling of 
their inland marches from these three hills and their 
bay, and of the fertile country of great beauty which 
they everywhere came upon, there arose outside a 
commotion of children crying, and the larger children 
who were in charge of the small ones, calling franti- 
cally. 

Squanto, admitted to the assembly as one who had 
borne an important part in the story that Myles 
Standish was relating, sprang to his feet and ran 
out of the house. He came back in a few moments, 
followed by another Indian — a tall, lithe, lean youth, 
with an unfriendly manner. 

“What is this?” demanded Governor Bradford, 
rising. 


A PILGRIM MAID 


243 

“Narragansett, come tell you not friends to you,” 
said Squanto. 

The Narragansett warrior, with a great air of 
contempt, threw upon the floor, in the middle of the 
assembly, a small bundle of arrows, tied around with 
a spotted snake skin. This done, he straightened 
himself, folded his arms, and looked disdainfully upon 
the white men. 

“Well, what has gone amiss with his digestion!” 
exclaimed Giles, aloud. 

His father shook his head at him. “How do you 
construe this act and manner, Squanto? Surely 
it portendeth trouble.” 

“It is war,” said Squanto. “Arrows tied by 
snake skin means no friend; war.” 

“Perhaps we would do well to let it lie; picking it 
up may mean acceptance of the challenge, as if it 
were a glove in a tourney. The customs of men run 
amazingly together, though race and education 
separate them,” suggested Myles Standish. 

“Squanto, take this defiant youngster out of 
here, and treat him politely; see that he is fed and 
given a place to sleep. Tell him that we will answer 
him By your approval, Governor and gentle- 

men ?” 

“You have anticipated my own suggestion, Cap- 
tain Standish,” said William Bradford bowing, and 
Squanto, who understood more than he could put 


A PILGRIM MAID 


244 

into words, spoke rapidly to the Narragansett mes- 
senger and led him away. 

“Shall we deliberate upon this, being conveniently 
assembled?” suggested Governor Bradford. 

“It needs small consideration, meseems,” said 
Myles Standish, impatiently. “Dismiss this mes- 
senger at once; do not let him remain here over night. 
The less your foe knows of you, the more your mys- 
tery will increase his dread of you. In the morning 
send a messenger of our own to the Narragansetts, 
and tell them that if they want war, war be it. If they 
prefer war to peace, let them begin upon the war at 
once; that we no more fear them than we have 
wronged them, and as they choose, so would we deal 
with them, as friends worth keeping, or foes to fear.” 

“Admirable advice,” Stephen Hopkins applauded 
the captain, and the other Plymouth men echoed 
his applause. 

Then, with boyish impetuosity and with laughter 
lighting up his handsome face, Giles leaped to his 
feet. 

“Now do I know the answer!” he cried. “Let 
the words be as our captain hath spoken; no one 
could utter better! But there is a further answer! 
Empty their snakeskin of arrows and fill it round 
with bullets, and throw it down among them, as 
they threw their pretty toy down to us! And our 
stuffing of it will have a bad flavour to their palates, 



“‘You look splendid, my knight of the wilderness’ ” 





























































V 

« 























A PILGRIM MAID 


245 

mark me. It will be like filling a Christmas goose 
with red peppers, and if it doesn’t send the Narra- 
gansetts away from the table they were setting for 
us, then is not my name Giles Hopkins! And one 
more word, my elders and masters! Let me be your 
messenger to the Narragansetts, I beseech you! 
They sent a youth to us; send you this youth back to 
them. If it be hauteur against hauteur, pride for 
pride, I’ll bear me like the lion and the unicorn fight- 
ing for the crown, both together, in one person. See 
whether or not I can strike the true defiant attitude!” 

With which, eyes sparkling with fun and excite- 
ment, head thrown back, Giles struck an attitude, 
folding his arms and spreading his feet, looking at 
once so boyish and so handsome that with difficulty 
Constance held her clasped hands from clapping 
him. 

“Truth, friend Stephen, your lad hath an idea!” 
said Myles Standish, delightedly. 

“It could not be better. Conceived in true har- 
mony with the savages’ message to us, and carrying 
conviction of our sincerity to them at the first glimpse 
of it! By all means let us do as Giles suggests.” 

There was not a dissentient voice in the entire 
assembly; indeed everyone was highly delighted with 
the humour of it. 

There w T as some objection to allowing Giles to be 
the messenger, but here Captain Standish stood his * 


A PILGRIM MAID 


246 

friend, though Constance looked at him reproach- 
fully for helping Giles into this risky business. 

“Let the lad go, good gentlemen,” he said. “Giles 
hath been with me on these recent explorations, and 
hath borne himself with fortitude, courage, and pru- 
dence. He longs to play a man’s part among us; 
let him have the office of messenger to the Narra- 
gansetts, and go thither in the early morning, at 
dawn. We will dismiss their youth at once, and fol- 
low him with our better message without loss of 
time.” 

So it was decided, and in high feather Giles 
returned to his home, Damaris on his shoulder, 
Constance walking soberly at his side, half sharing 
his triumph in his mission, half frightened lest her 
brother had but returned from unknown dangers to 
encounter worse ones. 

“Oh, they’ll not harm me, timorous Con!” Giles 
assured her. “They know that it is prudent to let 
lie the sleeping English bulldogs, of whom, trust me, 
they know by repute! Now, Sis, can you deck me 
out in some wise impressive to these savages, who 
will not see the dignity of our sober dress as we do?” 

“Feathers?” suggested Constance, abandoning her 
anxiety to enter into this phase of the mission. “I 
think feathers in your hat, Giles, and some sort of a 
bright sash across your breast, all stuck through with 
knives? I will get knives from Pris and some of 


A PILGRIM MAID 


247 

the others. And — oh, I know, Giles! That crimson 
velvet cloak that was our mother's, hung backward 
from your shoulder! Splendid, Giles; splendid enough 
for Sir Walter Raleigh himself to wear at Elizabeth’s 
court, or to spread for her to walk upon.” 

“It promises well, Sis, in sound, at least,” said 
Giles. “ But by all that’s wise, help me to carry this 
paraphernalia ready to don at a safe distance from 
Plymouth, and by no means betray to our solemn 
rulers how I shall be decked out!” 

The sun was still two hours below his rising when 
Giles started, the crimson velvet cloak in a bag, his 
matchlock, or rather Myles Standish’s matchlock 
lent Giles for the expedition, slung across his shoul- 
der, a sword at his side, and the plumes fastened into 
his hat by Constance’s needle and thread, but covered 
with another hat which surmounted his own. 

Constance had arisen, also, and went with Giles a 
little way upon his journey. Stephen Hopkins had 
blessed him and bidden him farewell on the preceding 
night, not to make too much of his setting forth. 

At the boundary which they had agreed upon, 
Constance kissed her brother good-bye, removing his 
second hat, and dressing the plumes crushed below it. 

“Good-bye, my dear one,” she said. “And hasten 
back to me, for I cannot endure delay of your return. 
And you look splendid, my Knight of the Wilderness, 
even without the crimson cloak. But see to it that 


A PILGRIM MAID 


248 

you make it swing back gloriously, and wave it in the 
dazzled eyes of the Narragansetts! ,, 

Thus with another kiss, Constance turned back 
singing, to show to Giles how little she feared for him, 
and half laughing to herself, for she was still very 
young, and they had managed between them to give 
this important errand much of the effect of a boy- 
and-girl, masquerading frolic. 

Yet, always subject to sudden variations of spirits, 
Constance had not gone far before she sat down upon 
a rock and cried heartily. Then, having sung and 
wept over Giles, she went sedately homeward to await 
his return in a mood that savoured of both extremes 
with which she had parted from him. 

The waiting was tedious, but it was not long. 
Sooner than she had dared to hope for him, Giles 
came marching back to her, and as he sang as he 
came, at the top of a lusty voice, Plymouth knew 
before he could tell it that his errand had been 
successful. 

Giles went straight to Governor Bradford’s house, 
whither those who had seen and heard him coming 
followed him. 

“There is our gift of war rejected,” said Giles, 
throwing down the spotted snakeskin, still bulging 
with its bullets. “They would have naught of it, 
but picked it up and gave it back to me with much 
air of solicitude, and with many words, which I could 


A PILGRIM MAID 


249 

not understand, but which I doubt not were full of 
the warmest love for us English. And I was glad to 
get back the stuffed snakeskin and our good bullets, 
for here, so far from supplies, bullets are bullets, and 
if any of our red neighbours did attack us we could not 
afford to have lessened our stock in object lessons. 
All’s well that ends well — where have I heard that 
phrase? Father, isn’t it in a book of yours?” Giles 
concluded, innocently unconscious that he was walk- 
ing on thin ice in alluding to a play of Shakespeare’s, 
and his father’s possession of it. 

“You have done well, Giles Hopkins,” said Gover- 
nor Bradford, heartily, “both in your conception of 
this message, and in your bearing it to the Narragan- 
setts. And so from them we have no more to fear?” 

“No more whatever,” said Giles. 

“Nevertheless, from this day let us build a stock- 
ade around the town, and close our gates at night, 
appointing sentinels to take shifts of guarding us,” 
said Myles Standish. “This incident hath shown me 
that the outlying savages are not securely to be 
trusted. I have long thought that we should or- 
ganize into military form. I want four squadrons 
of our men, each squadron given a quarter of the town 
to guard; I want pickets planted around us, and at 
any alarm, as of danger from fire or foe, I want these 
Plymouth companies to be ready to fly to rescue.” 

“It shall be as you suggest, Captain,” said Gover- 


A PILGRIM MAID 


250 

nor Bradford. “These things are for you to order, 
and the wisdom of this is obvious.” 

Constance and Giles walked home together, Con- 
stance hiding beneath her gown the plumes which she 
had first fastened into, then ripped out of Giles’s hat. 

“It is a delight to see you thus bearing your part 
in the affairs of Plymouth, Giles, dearest,” she said. 
“And what fun this errand must have been!” 

Giles turned on her a pain-drawn face. 

“So it was, Constance, and I did like it,” he said. 
“But how I wish Jack Billington had been with me! 
He was a brave lad, Constance, and a true friend. 
He was unruly, but he was not wicked, and the strict 
ways here irked him. Oh, I wish he had been here to 
do this service instead of me! I miss him, miss him.” 

Giles stopped abruptly, and Constance gently 
touched his arm. Giles had not spoken before of 
Jack’s death, and she had not dared allude to it. 

“I am sorry, too, dear Giles,” she whispered, and 
Giles acknowledged her sympathy by a touch upon 
her hand, while his other hand furtively wiped away 
the tears that manhood forbade the boy to let fall. 


CHAPTER XVII 


The Well-Conned Lesson 

G ILES took a new place in Plymouth after his 
embassy to the Narragansetts. No longer a 
boy among his fellow pilgrims, he fulfilled well and 
busily the offices that were his as one of the younger, 
yet mature men. 

He was given the discipline of the squadron, that, 
pursuant to Captain Standish’s plan for guarding the 
settlement, was the largest and controlled the most 
important gate of the stockade which was rapidly 
put up around the boundary of Plymouth after the 
defiance of the Narragansetts. Though that had 
come to naught, it had warned the colonists that 
danger might arise at an unforeseen moment. 

There was scarcity of provisions for the winter, the 
thirty-five destitute persons left the colony by the 
Fortune being a heavy additional drain upon its 
supplies. Everyone was put upon half rations, and it 
devolved upon Giles and John Alden to apportion 
each family’s share. It was hard to subsist through 
the bitter weather upon half of what would, at best, 
have been a slender nourishment, yet the Plymouth 


251 


A PILGRIM MAID 


252 

people faced the outlook patiently, uncomplainingly, 
and Giles, naturally hot-headed, impatient, got more 
benefit than he gave when he handed out the rations 
and saw the quiet heroism of their acceptance. 

He grew to be a silent Giles, falling into the habit of 
thoughtfulness, with scant talk, that was the prevail- 
ing manner of the Plymouth men. Between his 
father and himself there was friendliness, the former 
opposition between them, mutual annoyance, and 
irritation, were gone. Yet there they halted, not re- 
suming the intimacy of Giles’s childhood days. It 
was as if there were a reserve, rather of embarrass- 
ment than of lack of love; as if something were needed 
to jostle them into closer intercourse. 

Constance saw this, and waited, convinced that it 
would come, glad in the perfect confidence that she 
felt existed between them. 

She was a busy Constance in these days. The 
warmth of September held through that November, 
brooding, slumberous, quiet in the sunshine that 
warmed like wine. 

Constance and her stepmother cut and strung the 
few vegetables which they had, and hung them in the 
sunny corner of the empty attic room. 

They spread out corn and pumpkins upon the 
floor, instructing the willing Lady Fair to see to it 
that mice did not steal them. 

Dame Eliza, also, had grown comparatively silent. 


A PILGRIM MAID 


253 

Her long tirades were wanting; she showed no soft- 
ening toward Constance, yet she let her alone. 
Constance thought that something was on her step- 
mother’s mind, but she did not try to discover what — 
glad of the new sparing of her sharp tongue, having no 
expectation of anything better than this from her. 

Damaris had been sent with the other children to 
be instructed in the morning by Mrs. Brewster in 
sampler working and knitting; by her husband in the 
Westminster catechism, and the hornbook. 

In the afternoon Damaris was allowed to play 
quietly at keeping house, with Love Brewster, who 
was a quiet child and liked better to play at being a 
pilgrim, and making a house with Damaris, than to 
share in the boys’ games. 

“Where do you go, lambkin?” Constance asked 
her. “For we must know where to find you, nor 
must it be far from the house.” 

“It is just down by that little patch, Connie; it’s 
as nice as it can be, and it is the safest place in Ply- 
mouth, I’m sure,” Damaris assured her earnestly. 
'‘You see there is a woods, and a hollow, and a big, 
big, great tree, and its roots go all out, every way, and 
we live in them, because they are rooms already; 
don’t you see? And it’s nice and damp — but you 
don’t get your feet wet!” Damaris anticipated the 
objection which she saw in Constance’s eye. “It’s 
only — only — soft, gentle damp; not wetness, and 


A PILGRIM MAID 


254 

moss grows there, as green as green can be, and 
feathery! And on the tree are nice little yellow 
plates, with brown edges! Growing on it! And we 
play they are our best plates that we don’t use every 
day, because they are soft-like, and we didn’t care to 
touch them when we did it. But they make the 
prettiest best plates in the cupboard, for they grow in 
rows, with their edges over the next one, just the way 
you set up our plates in the corner cupboard. So 
please don’t think it isn’t a nice place, Constance, 
because it is, and I’d feel terribly afflicted, and 
cast down, and as nothing, if I couldn’t go there with 
Love.” 

Constance smiled at the child’s quoting of the 
phrases which she had heard in the long sermons that 
Elder Brewster read, or delivered to them twice on 
Sunday, there being no minister yet come to Ply- 
mouth. 

“You little echo!” Constance cried. “It surely 
would be a matter to move one’s pity if you suffered 
so deeply as that in the loss of your playground! 
Well, dear, till the warmth breaks up I suppose you 
may keep your house with Love, but promise tp 
leave it if you feel chilly there. We must trust you 
so far. Art going there now?” 

“Yes, dear Constance. You have a heart of com- 
passion and I love you with all of mine,” said Da- 
maris, expressing herself again like a little Puritan, 


A PILGRIM MAID 


2 55 

but hugging her sister with the natural heartiness of 
a loving child. 

Then she ran away, and Constance, taking her 
capacious darning bag on her arm, went to bear 
Priscilla Alden company at her mending, as she 
often did when no work about the house detained 
her. 

Giles came running down the road when the after- 
noon had half gone, his face white. “Con, come 
home! ,, he cried, bursting open the door. “Hasten! 
Damaris is strangely ill.” 

Constance sprang up, throwing her work in all 
directions, and Priscilla sprang up with her. With- 
out stopping to pick up a thread, the two girls went 
with Giles. 

“I don’t know what it is,” Giles said, in reply to 
Constance’s questions. “Love Brewster came run- 
ning to Dame Hopkins, crying that Damaris was sick 
and strange. She followed him to the children’s 
playground, and carried the child home. She is 
like to die; convulsions and every sign of poison she 
has, but what it is, what to do, no one knows. The 
women are there, but Doctor Fuller, as you know, is 
gone to a squaw who is suffering sore, and we could 
not bring him, even if we knew where he was, till it 
was too late. They have done all that they can re- 
call for such seizures, but the child grows worse.” 

“Oh, Giles!” groaned Constance. “She hath 


A PILGRIM MAID 


256 

eaten poison. What has Doctor Fuller told me of 
these things? If only I can remember! All I can 
think of is that he hath said different poisons require 
different treatment. Oh, Giles, Giles !” 

“Steady, Sister; it may be that you can help,” 
said Giles. “It had not occurred to any one how 
much the doctor had told you of his methods. Per- 
haps Love will know what Damaris touched.” 

“There is Love, sitting crouched in the corner of 
the garden plot, his head on his knees, poor little 
Love!” 

Constance broke into a run and knelt beside the 
little boy, who did not look up as she put her arms 
around him. 

“Love, Love, dear child, if you can tell me what 
Damaris ate perhaps God will help me cure her,” 
she said. “Look up, and be brave and help me. 
Did you see Damaris eat anything that you did not 
eat with her?” 

“Little things that grow around the big tree where 
it is wetter, we picked for our furniture,” Love said at 
once. “Damaris said you cooked them and they 
were good. So then she said we would play some of 
them was furniture, and some of them was our dinner. 
And I didn’t eat them, for they were like thin 
leather, only soft, and I felt of them, and couldn’t 
eat them. But Damaris did eat them.” 

“Toadstools!” cried Constance with a gasp. 


A PILGRIM MAID 


257 

“Toadstools, Love! Did they look like little tables? 
And did Damaris call them mushrooms ?” 

“Yes, like little tables/’ Love nodded his head 
hard. “All full underneath with soft crimped ” 

But Constance waited for no more. With a cry 
she was on her feet and running like the wind, calling 
back over her shoulder to Giles: 

“I’ll come quick! I know! I know! Tell Father 
I know!” 

“She hath gone to Doctor Fuller’s house,” said 
Priscilla, watching Constance’s flying figure, her 
hair unbound and streaming like a burnished banner 
behind her as she ran to get her weapon to fight with 
Death. “No girl ever ran as she can. Come, Giles; 
obey her. Tell your father and Mistress Hopkins 
that mayhap Constance can save the child.” 

They turned toward the house, and Constance sped 
on. 

“Nightshade! The belladonna!” she was saying 
to herself as she ran. “I know the phial; I know its 
place. O, God, give me time, and give me wit, and 
do Thou the rest ! ” Past power to explain, she swept 
aside with a vehement arm the woman who found 
needed shelter for herself in Doctor Fuller’s house, 
and kept it for him till his wife should come to Ply- 
mouth. 

Into the crude laboratory and pharmacy — in which 
the doctor had allowed her to work with him, of the 


A PILGRIM MAID 


258 

contents of which he had taught her so much for an 
emergency that she had little dreamed would so 
closely affect herself when it came — Constance flew, 
and turned to the shelf where stood, in their dark 
phials, the few poisons which the doctor kept ready to 
do beneficent work for him. 

“Belladonna, belladonna, the beautiful lady,” 
Constance murmured, in the curious way that minds 
have of seizing words and dwelling on them with 
surface insistence, while the actual mind is intensely 
working on a vital matter. 

She took down the wrong phial first, and set it back 
impatiently. 

“There should be none other like belladonna,” she 
said aloud, and took down the phial she sought. To 
be sure that she was right, though it was labelled 
in the doctor’s almost illegible small writing, she 
withdrew the cork. She knew the sickening odour 
of the nightshade which she had helped distil, an 
odour that dimly recalled a tobacco that had come to 
her father in England in her childhood from some 
Spanish colony, as she had been told, and also a wine 
that her stepmother made from wild berries. 

Constance shuddered as she replaced the cork. 

“It sickens me, but if only it will restore little 
Damaris!” she thought. 

Holding the phial tight Constance hastened away, 
and, her breath still coming painfully, she broke into 


A PILGRIM MAID 


259 

her swift race homeward, diminishing nothing of her 
speed in coming, her great purpose conquering the 
pain that oppressed her labouring breast. 

When she reached her home her father was watch- 
ing for her in the doorway. He took her hands in 
both of his without a word, covering the phial which 
she clasped, and looking at her questioningly. 

“I hope so; oh, I hope so, Father !” she said. 
“The doctor told me.” 

Stephen Hopkins led her into the house; Dame 
Eliza met her within. 

“Constance? Connie?” Thus Mistress Hopkins 
implored her to do her best, and to allow her to hope. 

“Yes, yes, Mother,” Constance replied to the 
prayer, and neither noted that they spoke to each 
other by names that they had never used before. 

The first glimpse that Constance had of Damaris 
on the bed sent all the blood back against her heart 
with a pang that made her feel faint. It did not 
seem possible that she was in time, even should her 
knowledge be correct. 

The child lay rigid as Constance’s eyes fell on her; 
her lips and cheeks were ghastly, her long hair height- 
ening the awful effect of her deathly colour. Fre- 
quent convulsions shook her body, her struggling 
breathing alone broke the stillness of the room. 

“She is quieter, but it is not that she is better,” 
whispered Dame Eliza. 


26 o 


A PILGRIM MAID 


Priscilla Alden stood ready with a spoon and glass 
in one hand, water in a small ewer in the other, al- 
ways the efficient, sensible girl when needed. 

Constance accepted the glass, took from it the 
spoon, gave the glass back to Priscilla and poured 
from the dark phial into the spoon the dose of bella- 
donna that Doctor Fuller had explained to her would 
be proper to use in an extreme case of danger. 

“How wonderful that he should have told me 
particularly about toadstool poisoning, yet it is 
because of the children,” Constance’s dual mind was 
saying to her, even while she poured the remedy and 
prayed with all her might for its efficacy. 

“Open her mouth,” she said to her father, and he 
obeyed her. Constance poured the belladonna 
down Damaris’s throat. 

Even after the first dose the child’s rigor relaxed 
before a long time had passed. The dose was 
repeated; the early dusk of the grayest month closed 
down upon the watchers in that room. The neigh- 
bours slipped away to their own homes and duties; 
night fell, and Stephen Hopkins, his wife, Giles, and 
Constance stood around that bed, feeling no want of 
food, watching, watching the gradual cessation of the 
wracking convulsions, the relaxation of the stiffened 
little limbs, the fall of the strained eyelids, the 
quieter breathing, the changing tint of the skin as the 
poison loosed its grip upon the poor little heart and 


26 i 


A PILGRIM MAID 

the blood began to course languidly, but duly, 
through the congested veins. 

“ Constance, she is safe ! ” Stephen Hopkins ventured 
at last to say as Damaris turned on her side with a 
long, refreshing breath. 

Giles went quickly from the room, and Constance 
turned to her father with sudden weakness that made 
her faint. 

Constance swayed as she stood and her father 
caught her in his arms, tenderly drawing her head 
down on his shoulder, as great rending sobs shook 
her from relief and the accumulated exhaustion of 
hunger, physical weariness, anxiety, and grief. 

“ Brave little lass!” Stephen Hopkins whispered, 
kissing her again and again. “ Brave, quick-witted, 
loving, wise little lass o’ mine!” 

Dame Eliza spoke never a word, but on her knees, 
with her head buried in the bright patch bedspread, 
one of Damaris’s cold little hands laid across her lips, 
she wept as Constance had never dreamed that her 
stepmother could weep. 

“Better look after her, Father,” Constance whis- 
pered, alarmed. “She will do herself a mischief, 
poor soul! Mother, oh — she loves me not! Father, 
comfort her; I will rest, and then I shall be my old 
self.” 

“You did not notice that Priscilla had come back,” 
her father said. “She is in the kitchen, and the 


262 


A PILGRIM MAID 


kettle is singing on the hob. Go, dear one, and 
Priscilla will give you food and warm drink. Let me 
help you there. My Constance, Damaris would be 
far beyond our love by now had you not saved her. 
You have saved her life, Constance! What do we 
not all owe to you ? ” 

“It was Doctor Fuller. He taught me. He is 
wise, and knew that children might take harm from 
toadstools, playing in the woods as ours do. It was 
not due to me that Damaris was saved,” Constance 
said. 

She was not conscious of how heavily she leaned on 
her father’s arm, which lovingly enfolded her, leading 
her to the big chair in the inglenook. The fire leaped 
and crackled; the steam from the singing kettle on 
the crane showed rosy red in the firelight; Hecate, 
Puck, and Lady Fair basked in the warmth, and 
Priscilla Alden knelt on the hearth stirring something 
savoury in the saucepan that sat among the raked-off 
ashes, while John Alden, who had brought Priscilla 
back to be useful to the worn-out household, sat on 
the settle, leaning forward, elbows on knees, the 
bellows between his hands, ready to pump up wind 
under a flame that might show a sign of flagging. 

“Dear me, how cosy it looks!” exclaimed Con- 
stance, involuntarily, her drooping muscles tautening 
to welcome the brightness waiting for her. “It does 
not seem as though there ever could come a sorrow to 


A PILGRIM MAID 263 

threaten a hearthstone so shut in, so well tended as 
this one!” 

“It did not come, my dear; it only looked in at the 
window, and when it saw the tended hearth, and 
how well-armed you were to grapple with it, off it 
went!” cried Priscilla, drawing Constance into the 
high-backed chair. “Feet on this stool, my pretty, 
and this napery over your knees! That’s right! 
Now this bowl and spoon, and then your Pris will 
pour her hot posset into your bowl, and you must 
shift it into your sweet mouth, and we’ll be as right 
as a trivet, instanter!” 

Priscilla acted as she chattered, and Constance 
gladly submitted to being taken care of, lying back 
smiling in weary, happy acquiescence. 

Priscilla’s posset was a heartening thing, and 
Constance after it, munched blissfully on a biscuit 
and sipped the wine that had been made of elder too 
brief a time before, yet which was friendly to her, 
nevertheless. 

Constance’s lids drooped in the warmth, her head 
nodded, her fingers relaxed. Priscilla caught her 
glass just in time as it was falling, and Constance 
slept beside the fire while John and Priscilla crept 
away, and Giles came to take their place, to keep up 
the blaze in case a kettle of hot water might be needed 
when Damaris wakened from her first restoring 
sleep. 


A PILGRIM MAID 


264 

At dawn Doctor Fuller came in and Constance 
aroused to welcome him. 

“Child, what an experience you have borne !” the 
good man said, bending with a moved face to greet 
Constance. “To think that I should have been 
absent! Your practice was more successful than 
mine; the squaw is dead. And you remembered my 
teaching, and saved the child with the nightshade 
we gathered and distilled that fair day, more than 
two months ago! ’Twas a lesson well conned!” 

“’Twas a lesson well taught,” Constance amended. 
“Sit here, Doctor Fuller, and let me call my father. 
You will see Damaris? And her mother is in need of 
a quieting draught, I think. The poor soul was ut- 
terly spent when last I saw her, though Tve selfishly 
slept, nor known aught of what any one else might be 
bearing.” 

Constance slipped softly through the door as she 
spoke, into the bedroom where Damaris lay. The 
little girl was sleeping, but her mother lay across her 
feet, her gloomy eyes staring at the wall, her face 
white and mournful. 

“Doctor Fuller is come, Stepmother,” whispered 
Constance. “Shall he not see Damaris? And you, 
have you not slept?” 

“Not a wink,” said Dame Eliza, rising heavily. 
“To me it is as if Damaris had died, and that that 
child there was another. I bore the agony of parting 


A PILGRIM MAID 


265 

from her, and now must abide by it, meseems, for I 
cannot believe that she is here and safe. Constance, 

it is to you .” She stopped and began again. “ I 

was ever fond of calling you your father’s daughter, 
making plain that I had no part in you. It was true; 
none have I, nor ever can have. But in my child 
you have the right of sister, and the restorer of her 
life. Damaris’s mother, and Damaris is your father’s 
other daughter, is heavily in your debt. I do not 

know .” She paused. She had spoken slowly, 

with difficulty, as if she could not find the words, nor 
use them as she wished to when she had found them. 
Young as she was, Constance saw that her step- 
mother was labouring under the stress of profound 
emotion, that tore her almost like a physical agony. 

“Now, now, prithee, Mistress Hopkins!” cried 
Constance, purposely using her customary title for 
her stepmother, to avoid the effect of there being 
anything out of the ordinary between them. “Be- 
think thee that I have loved Damaris dearly all her 
short life, and that her loss would have wounded me 
hardly less than it would have you. What debt can 
there be where there is love ? Would I not have sacri- 
ficed anything to keep the child, even for myself? 
And what have I done but remember what the doctor 
taught me, and give her drops ? Do not, I pray thee, 
make of my selfishness and natural affection a matter 
of merit! And now the doctor is waiting. Will you 


266 


A PILGRIM MAID 


not go to him and let him treat you, too ? — for indeed 
you need it. And he will tell you how best to bring 
Damaris back to her strength. I am going out into 
the morning air, for my long sleep by the hot fire 
hath made me heavy. I will be back in a short time 
to help with breakfast, Stepmother !” 

Constance snatched her cloak and ran out by the 
other door to escape seeing the doctor again and 
hearing her stepmother dilate to him upon the 
night’s events. 

The sun was rising, resplendent, but the air was 
cold. 

“And no wonder!” Constance thought, startled by 
her discovery. “Winter is upon us; to-day is 
December! Our warmth must leave us, and then 
will danger of poisoning be past, even in sheltered 
spots, such as that in which our little lass near found 
her death!” 

She spread her arms out to the sun rays, and let the 
crisp, sea wind cool her face. 

“What a world! What a world! How fair, how 
glad, how sweet! Oh, thank God that it is so to us 
all this morning! Never will I repine at hardships 
in kind Plymouth colony, nor at the cost of coming 
on this pilgrimage, for of all the world in Merry 
England there is none to-day happier or more grate- 
ful than is this pilgrim maid!” 


CHAPTER XVIII 


Christmas Wins, Though Outlawed 
TTLE Damaris, who had so nearly made the 



i J last great pilgrimage upon which we must all 
go, having turned her face once more toward the 
world she had been quitting, resumed her place in it 
but languidly. Never a robust child, her slender 
strength was impaired by the poison which she had 
absorbed. Added to this was the sudden coming 
of winter upon Plymouth, not well prepared to resist 
it, and it set in with violence, as if to atone for dally- 
ing on its way, for allowing summer to overlap its 
domain. Without a word to each other both Dame 
Eliza and Constance entered into an alliance of self- 
denial, doing without part of the more nourishing 
food out of their scanty allowance to give it to Dama- 
ris, and to plot in other ways to bring her back to 
health. 

Constance scarcely knew her stepmother. Silent, 
where she had been prone to talk; patient, where she 
had been easily vexed; with something almost de- 
precatory in her manner where she always had been 
self-assertive, Dame Eliza went about her round of 


268 


A PILGRIM MAID 


work like a person whom her husband's daughter had 
never known. 

Toward Constance most of all was she changed. 
Never by the most remote implication did she blame 
her, whereas heretofore everything that the girl did 
was wrong, and the subject of wearisome, scolding 
comment. She avoided unnecessary speech to Con- 
stance, seemed even to try not to look at her, but this 
without the effect of her old-time dislike; it was 
rather as if she felt humiliated before her, and could 
not bring herself to meet the girl's eyes. 

Constance, as she realized this, began to make 
little overtures toward her stepmother. Her sweet- 
ness of nature made her suffer discomfort when an- 
other was ill-at-ease, but so far her cautious attempts 
had met with failure. 

“We have been in Plymouth a year, lacking but a 
sen' Night, Stepmother," Constance said one Decem- 
ber day when the snow lay white on Plymouth and 
still thickened the air and veiled the sky. “And we 
have been in the New World past a year." 

“It is ordered that we remember it in special 
prayer and psalmody to the Lord, with thanksgiving 
on the anniversary of our landing; you heard that, 
Constantia?" her stepmother responded. 

“No, but that would be seemly, a natural course 
to follow," said Constance. 

“There is not one of us who is not reliving the voy- 


A PILGRIM MAID 269 

age hither and the hard winter of a year ago, Til 
warrant. And Christmas is nearing.” 

“That is a word that may not be uttered here,” 
said Dame Eliza with a gleam of humour in her eyes, 
though she did not lift them, and a flitting smile 
across her somewhat grimly set lips. 

“Oh, can it be harmful to keep the day on which, 
veiled in an infant’s form, man first saw his redemp- 
tion?” cried Constance. “There were sweetness and 
holiness in Christmas-keeping, meseems. If only 
we could cut out less violently! Stepmother, will 
you let me have my way?” 

“Your way is not in my guidance, Constantia,” 
said Dame Eliza. “It is for your father to grant 
you, or refuse you; not me.” 

“This is beyond my father’s province,” laughed 
Constance. “Will you let me make a doll — I have 
my box of paints, and you know that a gift for using 
paints and for painting human faces is mine. I will 
make a doll of white rags and dress her in our pretti- 
est coloured ones, with fastenings upon her clothes, 
so that they may be taken off and changed, else would 
she be a trial to her little mother! And then I will 
paint her face with my best skill, big blue eyes, curl- 
ing golden hair, rose-red cheeks and lips, and a fine, 
straight little nose. Oh, she shall be a lovely crea- 
ture, upon my honour! And will you let me give her 
to Damaris on Christmas morning, saying naught of 


A PILGRIM MAID 


270 

it to any one outside this house, so no one shall re- 
buke us, or fine my father again for letting his child 
have a Christmas baby, as they fined him for letting 
Ted and Ned play at a harmless game? Then I shall 
know that there is one happy child on the birthday 
of Him who was born that all children, of all ages, 
should be happy, and that it will be, of all the possible 
little ones, our dear little lass who is thus full of joy!” 

Mistress Hopkins did not reply for a moment. 
Then she raised the corner of her apron and wiped 
her eyes, muttering something about “strong mus- 
tard.” 

“How fond you are of my little Damaris,” she 
then said. “You know, Constantia, that I have no 
right to consent to your keeping Christmas, since our 
elders have set their faces dead against all practices 
of the Old Church. Yet are your reasons for wishing 
to do this, or so it seems to me in my ignorance, such 
as Heaven would approve, and it sorely is borne upon 
me that many worser sins may be wrought in Ply- 
mouth than making a delicate child happy on the 
birthday of the Lord. Go, then, and make your pup- 
pet, but do not tell any one that you first consulted 
me. If trouble comes of it they will blame you less, 
who are young and not so long removed from the 
age of dolls, than me, who am one of the Mothers in 
Israel.” 

“Oh, thank you, thank you, Stepmother!” cried 


A PILGRIM MAID 


271 

Constance jumping up and clapping her hands with 
greater delight than if she had herself received a 
Christmas gift. 

‘Til never betray you, never! None shall know 
that any but my wicked, light-minded self had a hand 

in this profanation of . What does it profane. 

Stepmother?” 

“Plymouth and Plymouth pilgrimage,” said Dame 
Eliza, and this time the smile that she had checked 
before had its way. 

Constance ran upstairs to look for the pieces which 
were to be transformed by fairy magic, through her 
means, from shapeless rags to a fair and rosy daughter 
for pale Damaris. She remembered, wondering, as 
she knelt before her chest, that she had clapped her 
hands and pranced, and that Dame Eliza had not 
reproved her. 

Constance was busy with her doll till Christmas 
morning, the more so that she must hide it from 
Damaris and there was not warmth anywhere to sit 
and sew except in the great living room where Da- 
maris amused Oceanus most of the darksome days. 
But Damaris’s mother connived with Constance to 
divert the child, and there were long evenings, for, 
to give Constance more time, Dame Eliza put Da- 
maris early to bed, and Constance sat late at her 
sewing. 

Thus when Christmas day came there sat on the 


A PILGRIM MAID ‘ 


272 

hearth, propped up against the back of Stephen 
Hopkins’s big volume of Shakespeare, a doll with a 
painted face that had real claim to prettiness. She 
wore a gown of sprigged muslin that hung so full 
around the pointed stomacher of her waist that it 
was a scandal to sober Plymouth, and a dangerous 
example to Damaris, had she been inclined to vain 
light-mindedness. And — though this was a surprise 
also to Dame Eliza — there was a horse of brown 
woollen stuff, with a tail of fine-cut rags and a mane of 
ravelled rags, and legs which, though considerably 
curved as to shape and unreliable as to action, were un- 
deniably legs, and four in number. There were bright, 
black buttons on the steed’s head suggestive of eyes, 
and the red paint in two spots below them were all 
the fiery nostrils the animal required. This was 
Giles’s contribution to the joy of his ailing baby 
brother. Oceanus was a frail child whose grasp on 
life had been taken at a time too severe for him to 
hold it long, nor indeed did he. 

“Come out and wander down the street, Con,” 
Giles whispered to Constance under the cover of the 
shouts of the two children who had come downstairs 
to find the marvellous treasures, the doll and horse, 
awaiting them, and who went half mad with joy, just 
like modern children in old Plymouth, as if they had 
not been little pilgrims. 

“There will be amusement for thee; come out, 


A PILGRIM MAID 


273 

but never say I bade you come. You can make 
an errand.” 

“Oh, Giles, you are not plotting mischief?” Con- 
stance implored, seeing the fun in her brother’s eyes 
and fearing an attempt at Christmas fooling. 

“No harm afoot, but we hope a little laughter,” 
said Giles, nodding mysteriously as he left the house. 

Constance could not resist her curiosity. She 
wrapped herself in her cloak against the cold and 
tied a scarf over her hair, before drawing its hood 
over her head. 

“You look like a witch, like a sweet, lovely witch,” 
cried Damaris, getting up from her knees on which 
she had seemed, and not unjustly, to be worshipping 
her doll, whom she had at once christened Connie, 
and running over to hug her sister, breathless. “Are 
you a witch, Constance, and made my Connie by 
magic? No, a fairy! A fairy you are! My fairy, 
darling, lovely sister!” 

“Be grateful to Constantia, as you should be, 
Damaris, but prate not of fairies. I will not let go 
undone all my duty as a Puritan and pilgrim mother. 
Constantia is a kind sister to you, which is better, 
than a fairy falsehood,” said Dame Eliza, rallying 
something of her old spirit. 

Constance kissed Damaris and whispered some- 
thing to her so softly that all the child caught was 
“Merry.” Yet the lost word was not hard to guess. 


A PILGRIM MAID 


274 

Then Constance went out and down the street, 
wondering what Giles had meant. She saw a small 
group of men before her, near the general storehouse 
for supplies, and easily made out that they were the 
younger men of the plantation, including those that 
had come on the Fortune , and that Giles and Francis 
Billington were to the fore. 

Up the street in his decorous raiment, but without 
additional marking of the day by his better cloak 
as on Sunday, came Governor Bradford with his un- 
hastening pace not quickened, walking with his 
English thorn stick that seemed to give him extra, 
gubernatorial dignity, toward the group. The 
younger lads nudged one another, laughing, half 
afraid, but not Giles. He stood awaiting the governor 
as if he faced him for a serious cause, yet Constance 
saw that his eyes danced. 

“Good morning, my friends,” said William Brad- 
ford. “Not at work? You are apportioned to the 
building of the stockade. It is late to begin your 
day, especially that the sun sets early at this season.” 

“It is because of the season, though not of the 
sun’s setting, that we are not at work,” said Giles, 
chosen spokesman for this prank by his fellows, and 
now getting many nudges lest he neglect his office. 
“Hast forgotten, Mr. Bradford, what day this is? 
It offends our conscience to work on a day of such 
high reverence. This be a holy day, and we may not 


A PILGRIM MAID 


275 

work without sin, as the inward voice tells us. We 
waited to explain to you what looked like idleness, 
but is rather prompted by high and lofty principles.” 

The governor raised his eyebrows and bowed 
deeply, not without a slight twitching of his lips, as 
he heard this unexpected and solemn protest. 

“ Indeed, Giles Hopkins! And is it so? You have 
in common with these, your fellow labourers, a case 
of scruples to which the balm of the opinions of your 
elders and betters, at least in experience and author- 
ity, does not apply? Far be it from me to interfere 
with your consciences! We have come to the New 
World, and braved no slight adversity for just this 
cause, that conscience unbridled, undriven, might 
guide us in virtue. Disperse, therefore, to your 
homes, and for the day let the work of protection 
wait. I bid you good morning, gentlemen, and pray 
you be always such faithful harkeners to the voice of 
conscience.” 

The governor went on, having spoken, and the 
actors in the farce looked crestfallen at one an- 
other, the point of the jest somewhat blunted by the 
governor’s complete approval. Indeed there were 
some among them who followed the governor. He 
turned back, hoping for this, and said: 

“This is not done to approve of Christmas-keeping 
but rather to spare you till you are better informed. ” 

“What will you do, Giles?” asked Constance, as 


A PILGRIM MAID 


276 

her brother joined her, Francis also, not in the least 
one with those who relinquished the idea of a holiday. 

“ Do ? Why follow our consciences, as we were com- 
mended for doing!” shouted Francis tossing his hat 
in the air and catching it neatly on his head in the ap- 
proved fashion of a mountebank at a fair in England. 

“Our consciences bid us play at games on Christ- 
mas,” supplemented Giles. “Would you call the 
girls and watch us? Or we’ll play some games that 
you can join in, such as catch-catch, or pussy-wants- 
a-corner.” 

Constance shook her head. “Giles, be prudent,” 
she warned. “You have won your first point, but 
if I know the governor’s face there was something in 
it that betokened more to come. You know there’ll 
be no putting up with games on any day here, least of 
all on this day, which would be taken as a return to 
abandoned ways. Yet it is comical!” Constance 
added, finding her role of mentor irksome when all 
her youth cried out for fun. 

“Good Con! You are no more ready for unbroken 
dulness than we are ! ” Francis approved her. “ Come 
along, Giles; get the bar for throwing, and the ball, 
and who said pitch-and-toss? I have a set of rings 
I made, I and — someone else.” Francis’s face 
clouded. Pranks had lost much of their flavour since 
he lacked Jack. 

Seeing this, Giles raced Francis off, and the other 


A PILGRIM MAID 


2 77 

conscientious youths who refused work, streamed 
after them. 

Constance continued her way to the Alden home. 
She thought that a timely visit to Priscilla would 
bring her home at such an hour as to let her see the 
end of the morning escapade. 

Elizabeth Tilley drifted into Priscilla’s kitchen in 
an aimless way, not like her usual busy self, al- 
though she made the reason for her coming a recipe 
which she needed. Soon Desire Minter followed her, 
asking Priscilla if she would show her how to cut an 
apron from a worn-out skirt, but, like Elizabeth, 
Desire seemed listless and uncertain. 

“There’s something wrong!” cried Desire at last, 
without connection. “There is a sense of there being 
Christmas in the world somewhere to-day, and not 
here! I am glad that I go back to England as soon 
as opportunity offers.” 

“There is Christmas here, most conscientiously 
kept!” laughed Constance. “Hark to the tale of 
it!” And she told the girls what had happened that 
morning. 

“Come with me, bear me company home, and we 
shall, most probably, see the end of it, for I am sure 
that the governor is not done with those lads,” she 
added. 

Desire and Elizabeth welcomed the suggestion, 
for they were, also, about to go home. 


A PILGRIM MAID 


278 

“See yonder!” cried Constance, pointing. 

Down the street there was what, in Plymouth, 
constituted a crowd, gathered into two bands. With 
great shouting and noise one band was throwing a 
ball, which the other band did its utmost to prevent 
from entering a goal toward which the throwers 
directed it. Alone, one young man was throwing 
a heavy bar, taking pride in his muscles which bal- 
anced the bar and threw it a long distance with ease 
and grace. 

“To think that this is Plymouth, with merry- 
making in its street on Christmas day!” exclaimed 
Desire, her eyes kindling with pleasure. 

“Ah, but see the governor is coming, leading back 
those men who went to work; he has himself helped 
to build the stockade. Now we shall see how he re- 
ceives this queer idea of a holiday, which is foreign 
to us, though it comes from England,” said Constance. 

Governor Bradford came toward the shouting and 
mirth-making with his dignified gait unvaried. The 
game slackened as he drew nearer, though some 
of the players did their best to keep it up at the same 
pace, not to seem to dread the governor’s disapproval. 

Having gained the centre of the players, the gov- 
ernor halted, and looked from one to another. 

“Hand me that ball, and yonder bar, and all other 
implements of play which you have here,” he said, 
sternly. “My friends,” he added to the men who 


A PILGRIM MAID 


279 

had been at work, “take from our idlers their 
toys.” 

There was no resistance on the part of the players; 
they yielded up bats, ball, and bar, the stool-ball, 
goal sticks, and all else, without demur, curious to see 
what was in the wind. 

“Now, young men of Plymouth colony,” said 
Governor Bradford, “this morning you told me that 
your consciences forbade you to work on Christmas 
day. Although I could not understand properly 
trained Puritan consciences going so astray, yet did 
I admit your plea, not being willing to force you to 
do that which there was a slender chance of your 
being honest in objecting to, for conscience sake. 
You have not worked with your neighbours for half 
of this day. Now doth my conscience arouse, nor 
will it allow me, as governor, to see so many lusty 
men at play, while others labour for our mutual 
benefit. Therefore I forbid the slightest attempt 
at game-playing on this day. If your consciences 
will not allow you to labour then will mine, though 
exempting you from work because of your sense of 
right, yet not allow you to play while others work. 
For the rest of this day, which is called Christmas, 
but which we consider but as the twenty-fifth day 
of this last month of the year, you will either go to 
work, or you will remain close within your various 
houses, on no account to appear beyond your thresh- 


28 o 


A PILGRIM MAID 


olds. For either this is a work-a-day afternoon, or 
else is it holy, which we by no means admit. In 
either case play is forbidden you. See to it that you 
obey me, or I will deal with you as I am empowered 
to deal.” 

The young men looked at one another, some in- 
clined to resent this, others with a ready sense of 
humour, burst out laughing; among these latter was 
Giles, who cried: 

“Fairly caught, Governor Bradford! You have 
played a Christmas game this day yourself and have 
won out at it! For me, as a choice between staying 
close within the house and working, I will take to the 
stockade. By your leave, then, Governor, I will 
join you at the work, dinner being over.” 

“You have my leave, Giles Hopkins,” said William 
Bradford, and there was a twinkle in his eyes as he 
turned them, with no smile on his lips, upon Giles. 

Giles went home with Constance in perfect good 
humour, taking the end of his mischief in good 
part. 

“For look you,” he said, summing up comments 
upon it to his sister. “I don’t mind encountering de- 
feat by clever outwitting of me. We tried a scheme 
and the governor had a better one. What I mind 
is unfairness; that was fair, and I like the governor 
better than I ever did before.” 

Stephen Hopkins stood in the doorway of the house 


28 i 


A PILGRIM MAID 

as the brother and sister came toward it. He was 
gazing at the skyline with eyes that saw nothing 
near to him, preoccupied, wistful, in a mood that was 
rare to him, and never betrayed to others. His eyes 
came back to earth slowly, and he looked at Giles and 
Constance as one looks who has difficulty in seeing 
realities, so occupied was he with his thoughts. He 
put out a hand and took one of Constance’s hands, 
drawing it up close to his breast, and he laid his left 
hand heavily on Giles’s shoulder. 

“Across that ocean it is Christmas day,” he said, 
slowly. “In England people are sitting around their 
hearths mulling ale, roasting apples, singing old 
songs and carols. When I was young your mother 
and I rode miles across a dim forest, she on her pillion, 
I guiding a mettlesome beauty. But she had no fear 
with my hand on his bridle; we had been married but 
since Michaelmas. We went to visit your grand- 
mother, her mother, Lady Constantia, who was a 
famous toast in her youth. You are very like your 
mother, Constance; I have often told you this. 
Strange, that one can inhabit the same body in such 
different places in a lifetime; stranger that, still in 
the same body, he can be such an altered man! Giles, 
my son, I have been thinking long thoughts to-day. 
There is something that I must say to you as your 
due; nay something, rather, that I want to say to you. 
I have been wrong, my son. I have loved you so 


282 


A PILGRIM MAID 


well that a defect in you annoyed me, and I have 
been hard, impatient, offending against the charity 
in judgment that we owe all men, surely most those 
who are our nearest and dearest. I accused you 
unjustly, and gave you no opportunity to explain. 
Giles, as man to man, and as a father who failed you, 
I beg your pardon.” 

“Oh, sir! Oh, dear, dear Father!” cried Giles in 
distress. “It needed not this! All I ask is your 
confidence. I have been an arrogant young upstart, 
denying you your right to deal with me. It is I who 
am wrong, wrongest in that I have never confessed 
the wrong, and asked your forgiveness. Surely it is 
for me to beg your pardon; not you mine!” 

“At least a good example is your due from me,” 
said Stephen Hopkins, with a smile of wistful 
tenderness. “We are all upstarts, Giles lad, denying 
that we should receive correction, and this from a 
Greater than I. The least that we can do is to be 
willing to acknowledge our errors. With all my 
heart I forgive you, lad, and I ask you to try to love 
me, and let there be the perfect loving comradeship 
between us that, it hath seemed, we had left behind 
us on the other shore, just when it was most needed 
to sustain us in our venture on this one. You loved 
me well, Giles, as a child; love me as well as you can 
as a man.” 

Giles caught his father’s hand in both of his, and 


A PILGRIM MAID 283 

was not ashamed that tears were streaming down his 
cheeks. 

“ Father, I never loved you till to-day !” he cried. 
“You have taught me true greatness, and — and — 
Oh, indeed I love and honour you, dear sir!” 

“The day of good will, and of peace to it! And of 
love that triumphs over wrongs,” said Stephen 
Hopkins, turning toward the house, and whimsically 
touching with his finger-tips the happy tears that 
quivered on Constance’s lashes. 

“We cannot keep it out of Plymouth colony, 
however we strive to erect barriers against the feast; 
Christmas wins, though outlawed!” 

“God rest ye merry, gentlemen; 

Let nothing you dismay,” 

Constance carolled as she hung up her cloak, her 
heart leaping in rapture of gratitude. Nor did 
Dame Eliza reprove her carol, but half smiled as 
Oceanus crowed and beat a pan wildly with his 
Christmas horse. 


CHAPTER XIX 


A Fault Confessed, Thereby Redressed 
THE winter wore away, that second winter in 



A Plymouth colony that proved so hard to en- 
dure, the new state of things in the Hopkins house- 
hold continued. Constance could not understand 
her stepmother. Though the long habit of a life- 
time could not be at once entirely abandoned, yet 
Dame Eliza scolded far less, and toward Constance 
herself maintained an attitude that was far from 
fault-finding. Indeed she managed to combine 
something like regretful deference that was not 
unlike liking, with a rigid keeping of her distance 
from the girl. Constance wondered what had come 
over Mistress Hopkins, but she was too thankful for 
the peace she enjoyed to disturb it by the least 
attempt to bridge the distance that Dame Eliza had 
established between them. 

Her father and Giles were a daily delight to Con- 
stance. The comradeship that they had been so 
happy in when Giles was a child was theirs again, 
increased and deepened by the understanding that 
years had enabled Giles and his father to share as 


A PILGRIM MAID 285 

one man with another. And added to that was 
wistful affection, as if the older man and the younger 
one longed to make up by strength of love for the 
wasted days when all had not been right between 
them. 

Constance watched them together with gladness 
shining upon her face. Dame Eliza also watched 
them, but with an expression that Constance could 
not construe. Certain it was that her stepmother 
was not happy, not sure of herself, as she had always 
been. 

Oceanus was not well; he did not grow strong and 
rosy as did the other Mayflower baby, Peregrine 
White, though Oceanus was by this time walking and 
talking — a tall, thin, reed-like little baby, fashioned 
not unlike the long grasses that grew on Plymouth 
harbour shore. But Damaris had come back to 
health. She was Constance’s charge; her mother 
yielded her to Constance and devoted herself to the 
baby, as if she had a presentiment of how brief a time 
she was to keep him. 

It was a cruelly hard winter; except that there was 
not a second epidemic of mortal disease it was 
harder to the exiles than the first winter in Plymouth. 

Hunger was upon them, not for a day, a week, or a 
month, but hourly and on all the days that rose and 
set upon the lonely little village, encompassed by 
nothing kinder than reaches of marsh, sand, and 


286 


A PILGRIM MAID 


barrens that ended in forest; the monotonous sea 
that moaned against their coast and separated them 
from food and kin; and the winter sky that often 
smiled on them sunnily, it is true, but oftener was 
coldly gray, or hurling upon them bleak winds and 
driving snows. 

From England had come on the Fortune more 
settlers to feed, but no food for them. Plymouth 
people were hungry, but they faithfully divided their 
scarcity with the new-comers and hoped that in the 
spring Mr. Weston, the agent in England who had 
promised them the greatest help and assured them of 
the liveliest interest in this heroic venture, would send 
them at least a fraction of the much he had pledged 
to its assistance. 

So when the spring, that second spring, came in 
and brought a small ship there was the greatest ex- 
citement of hope in her coming. But all she brought 
was letters, and seven more passengers to consume 
the food already so shortened, but not an ounce of 
addition to the supplies. One letter was from Mr. 
Weston, filled with fair words, but so discouraging 
in its smooth avoidance"of actual help that Governor 
Bradford dared not make its contents known, lest it 
should discourage the people, already sufficiently 
downhearted, and with more than enough reason to 
be so. There was a letter on this ship for Con- 
stance from Humility, and Governor Bradford 


A PILGRIM MAID 287 

beckoned to John Howland, standing near and said to 
him: 

“Take this letter up to Mistress Constantia 
Hopkins, and ask her father to come to me, if it 
please him. Say to him that I wish to consult 
him. ,, 

“I will willingly do your bidding, Mr. Bradford,” 
said John Howland, accepting the letter which the 
governor held out to him and turning it to see in all 
lights its yellowed folder and the seal thrice im- 
pressed along its edge to insure that none other than 
she whose name appeared written in a fine, running 
hand on the obverse side, should first read the letter. 
“In fact I have long contemplated a visit to 
Mistress Constantia. It hath seemed to me that 
Stephen Hopkins’s daughter was growing a woman 
and a comely woman. She is not so grave as I would 
want her to be, but allowance must be made for her 
youth, and her father is not so completely, nor pro- 
foundly set free from worldliness as are our truer 
saints; witness the affair of the shovelboard. But 
Constantia Hopkins, under the control and obedience 
of a righteous man, may be worthy of his hand.” 

“Say you so!” exclaimed William Bradford, half 
amused, half annoyed, and wondering what his 
quick-tempered but honoured friend Stephen would 
say to this from John Howland — he who had a justi- 
fiable pride in his honourable descent and who held 


288 A PILGRIM MAID 

no mere man equal to his Constance, the apple of his 
eye. “I had not a suspicion that you were turning 
over in your mind thoughts of this nature. I would 
advise you to consult Mr. Hopkins before you let 
them take too strong hold upon your desire. But 
in as far as my errand runneth with your purpose to 
further your acquaintance with the maiden, in so far 
I will help you, good John, for I am anxious that Mr. 
Hopkins shall know as soon as possible what news 
the ship hath brought. Stay; here is another letter; 
for Mistress Eliza Hopkins this time. Take that, 
also, if you will and bid Mr. Hopkins hither. ,, 

John Howland, missing entirely the hint of warning 
in the governor’s voice and manner, took the two 
letters and went his way. 

He found Stephen Hopkins at his house, planning 
the planting of a garden with his son. 

“I will go at once; come thou with me, Giles. It 
sounds like ill news, I fear me, that hint of wishing to 
consult me. Somehow it seems that as ‘good wine 
needs no bush,’ for which we have Shakespeare’s 
authority, so good news needs little advice, or rarely 
seeks it, for its dealing.” 

So saying Stephen Hopkins, straightening himself 
with a hand on his stiffened side went into the house, 
and, taking his hat, went immediately out of it again, 
with Giles. John Howland followed them into the 
house, but not out of it. Instead, he seated himself, 


A PILGRIM MAID 289 

unbidden, upon the fireside settle, and awaited their 
departure. 

Then he produced his two letters, and offered one 
to Constance. 

“I have brought you this, Mistress Constantia,” 
he said, ponderously, “at the request of the governor, 
but no less have I brought it because it pleaseth me 
to do you a service, as I hope to do you many, even 
to the greatest, in time to come.” 

“Thank you, John,” said innocent Constance, 
having no idea of the weighty meaning underlying 
this statement, indeed scarce hearing it, being eager 
to get the letter which he held. “Oh, from Humility! 
It is from Humility! Look, little Damaris, a letter 
from England, writ by Humility Cooper! The 
Fortune is safely in port, then! Come, my cosset, 
and I will read you what Humility hath to tell us of 
her voyage, of home, and all else! First of all shall 
you and I hear this: then we will hasten to Priscilla 
Alden and read it to her new little daughter, for she 
hath been so short a time in Plymouth that she must 
long for news from across the sea, do you not say so ? ” 

Damaris giggled in enjoyment of Constance’s 
nonsense, which the serious little thing never failed to 
enter into and to enjoy, as unplayful people always 
enjoy those who can frolic. The big sister ran away, 
with the smaller one clinging to her skirt, and with 
never a backward glance nor thought for John 


290 


A PILGRIM MAID 


Howland, meditating a great opportunity for 
Constance, as he sat on the fireside settle. 

“Mistress Hopkins, this is your letter,” said John, 
completing his errand when Constance was out of 
sight. 

He offered Dame Eliza her letter. She looked at 
it and thrust it into her pocket with such a heightened 
colour and distressed look that even John Howland’s 
preoccupation took note of it. 

“This present hour seems to be an opportunity that 
is a leading, and I will follow this leading, Mistress 
Hopkins, by your leave,” John said. “It cannot be 
by chance that all obstacles to plain speaking to you 
are removed. I had thought first to speak to Stephen 
Hopkins, or perhaps to Constantia herself, but I see 
that it is better to engage a woman’s good offices.” 

Dame Eliza frowned at him, darkly; she was in no 
mood for dallying, and this preamble had a sound 
that she did not like. 

“Good offices for what? My good offices? 
Why?” she snapped. “Why should you speak to 
Mr. Hopkins, with whose Christian name better men 
than you in this colony make less free? And still 
more I would know why you should speak either 
first or last to Mistress Constantia? That hath a 
sound that I do not like, John Howland!” 

John Howland stared at her, aghast, a moment, 
then he said: 


A PILGRIM MAID 


291 

“It is my intent, Mistress Eliza Hopkins, to offer 
to wed Mistress Constantia, and that cannot mislike 
yau* Young though she be, and somewhat frivolous, 
yet do I hope much for her from marriage with a 
godly man, and I find her comely to look upon. 
Therefore ” 

“Therefore!” cried Dame Eliza who seemed to 
have lost her breath for a moment in sheer angry 
amazement. “Therefore you would make a fool of 
yourself, had not it been done for you at your birth! 
Art completely a numbskull, John Howland, that 
you speak as though it was a favour, and a matter 
for you to weigh heavily before coming to it, that 
you might make Stephen Hopkins’s daughter your 
wife? Put the uneasiness that it gives you as to her 
light-mindedness out of your thoughts, nor dwell 
over-much upon her comeliness, for your own good! 
Comely is she, and a rare beauty, to give her partly 
her due. And what is more, is she a sweet and noble 
lass, graced with wit and goodness that far exceed 
your knowledge; not even her father can know as I 
do, with half my sore reason, her patience, her 
charity, her unfailing generosity to give, or to for- 
give. Marry Constance, forsooth! Why, man, 
there is not a man in this Plymouth settlement 
worthy of her latchets, nor in all England is there one 
too good for her, if half good enough! Your eyes 
will be awry and for ever weak from looking so high 


A PILGRIM MAID 


292 

for your mate. But that you are the veriest ninny 
afoot I would deal with you, John Howland, for your 
impudence! Learn your place, man, and never let 
your conceit so run away with you that you dare to 
speak as if you were hesitant as to Mr. Hopkins’s 
daughter to be your wife! Zounds! John, get out of 
my sight lest I be tempted to take my broom and 
clout ye! Constance Hopkins and you, forsooth! 
Oh, be gone, I tell ye! She’s the pick and flower of 
maidens, in Plymouth or England, or where you will ! ” 

John Howland rose, slowly, stiffly, angry, but also 
ashamed, for he had not spirit, and he felt that he had 
stepped beyond bounds in aspiring to Constance 
since Dame Eliza with such vehemence set it before 
him. Then, too, it were a strong man who could 
emerge unscathed from an inundation of Dame 
Eliza’s wrath. 

“I meant no harm, Mistress,” he said, awkwardly. 
“No harm is done, for the maid herself knows 
naught of it, nor any one save the governor, and he 
but a hint. Let be no ill will between us for this. I 
suppose, since Mistress Constantia is not for me, I 
must e’en marry whom I can, and I think I must 
marry Elizabeth Tilley.” 

“What does it matter to me who you marry?” said 
Dame Eliza, turning away with sudden weariness. 
“It’s no concern of mine, beyond the point I’ve 
settled for good and all.” 


A PILGRIM MAID 


293 

John Howland went away. After he had gone 
Constance came around the house and entered by 
the rear door. Her eyes were full of moisture from 
suppressed laughter, yet her lips were tremulous and 
her eyes, dewy though they were, shone with happi- 
ness. 

“Hast heard ?” demanded Dame Eliza. 

“I could not help it,” said Constance. “I left 
Damaris at Priscilla’s and ran back to ask you, for 
Priscilla, to lend her the pattern of the long wrapping 
cloak that you made for our baby when he was tiny. 
Pris’s baby seems cold, she thinks. And as I en- 
tered I heard John. I near died of laughing! I had 
thought a lover always felt his beloved to be so fair 
and fine that he scarce dared look at her! Not so 
John ! But after all, it is less that I am John’s beloved 
than his careful — and doubtful choice. But for the 
rest, Mistress Hopkins — Stepmother — might I call 
you Mother? — what shall I say? I am ashamed, 
grateful but ashamed, that you praise me so! Yet 
how glad I am, never can I find words to tell you. I 
thought that you hated me, and it hath grieved me, 
for love is the air I breathe, and without it I shrivel 
up from chill and suffocation! I would that I could 
thank you, tell you . ” Constance stopped. 

The expression on Dame Eliza’s face, wholly 
beyond her understanding, silenced her. 

“You have thanked me,” Dame Eliza said. 


A PILGRIM MAID 


294 

“Damaris is alive only through you. However you 
love her, yet her life is her mother’s debt to you. 
Much, much more do I owe you, Constantia Hopkins, 
and none knows it better than myself. Let be. Words 
are poor. There is something yet to be done. After 
it you may thank me, or deny me as you will, but 
between us there will be a new beginning, its shaping 
shall be as you will. Till that is done which I must 
do, let there be no more talk between us.” 

Puzzled, but impressed by her stepmother’s 
manner and manifest distress, Constance acquiesced. 
It was not many days before she understood. 

The people of Plymouth were summoned to a 
meeting at Elder William Brewster’s house. It was 
generally understood that somethingof the nature of a 
court of justice, and at the same time of a religious 
character was to take place. Everyone came, drawn 
by curiosity and the dearth of interesting public 
events. 

Stephen Hopkins, Giles, and Constance came, the 
two little children with them, because there was no 
one at home to look after them. Not the least 
suspicion of what they were to hear entered the 
mind of these three, or it might never have been 
heard. 

Elder Brewster, William Bradford, Edward Wins- 
low sat in utmost gravity at the end of the room. It 
crossed Stephen Hopkins’s mind to wonder a little at 


A PILGRIM MAID 


295 

his exclusion from this tribunal, for it had the effect 
of a tribunal, but it was only a passing thought, and 
instantly it was answered. 

Dame Eliza Hopkins entered the room, with 
Mistress Brewster, and seated herself before the three 
heads of the colony. 

“My brethren,” said William Brewster, rising, “it 
hath been said on Authority which one may not 
dispute that a broken and contrite heart will not be 
despised. You have been called together this night 
for what purpose none but my colleagues and myself 
knew. It is to harken to the public acknowledgment 
of a grave fault, and by your hearing of a public con- 
fession to lend your part to the wiping out of this sin, 
which is surely forgiven, being repented of, yet 
which is thus atoned for. We have vainly endea- 
voured to persuade the person thus coming before 
you that this course was not necessary; since her 
fault affected no one but her family, to them alone 
need confession be made. As she insisted upon this 
course, needs must we consent to it. Dame Eliza 
Hopkins, we are ready to harken to you/' 

He sat down, and Dame Eliza, rising, came for- 
ward. Stephen Hopkins's face was a study, and 
Giles and Constance, crimson with distress, looked 
appealingly at their father, but the situation was 
beyond his control. 

“Friends, neighbours, fellow pilgrims," began 


296 A PILGRIM MAID 

Dame Eliza, manifestly in real agony of shamed 
distress, yet half enjoying herself, through her love 
for drama and excitement, “I am a sinner. I cannot 
continue in your membership unless you know the 
truth, and admit me thereto. My anger, my wicked 
jealousy hath persecuted the innocent children of my 
husband, they whose mother died and whose place I 
should have tried in some measure to make good. 
But at all times, and in all ways have I used them ill, 
not with blows upon the body, but upon their hearts. 
Jealousy was my temptation, and I yielded to it. But, 
not content with sharp and cruel words, I did plot 
against them to turn their father from them, especi- 
ally from his son, because I wanted for my son the 
inheritance in England which Stephen Hopkins hath 
power to distribute. I succeeded in sowing discord 
between the father and Giles, but not between my 
husband and his daughter. At last I used a signa- 
ture which fell into my hands, and by forwarding it to 
England, set in train actions before the law which 
would defraud Giles Hopkins and benefit my own 
son. By the ship that lately came into our harbour 
I received a letter, sent to me by the governor, by 
the hand of John Howland, promising me success in 
my wicked endeavour. My brethren, my heart is 
sick unto death within me. Thankfully I say that 
all estrangement is past between Giles Hopkins and 
his father. In that my wicked success at the be- 


A PILGRIM MAID 


297 

ginning was foiled. While I was doing these things 
against the children, Constantia Hopkins, by her 
sweetness, her goodness, her devotion, without a 
tinge of grudging, to her little half-sister and brother, 
and at last her saving of my child’s life when no help 
but hers was near and the child was dying before me, 
hath broken my hard heart; and in slaying me — for I 
have died to my old self under it — hath made me to 
live. Therefore I publicly acknowledge my sin, and 
bid you, my fellow pilgrims, deal with me as you see 
fit, neither asking for mercy, nor in any wise claiming 
it as my desert.” 

Stephen Hopkins had bent forward, his elbows on 
his knees, hiding his face in his hands. Giles stared 
straight before him, his brow dark red, frowning till 
his face was drawn out of likeness to itself, his nether 
lip held tight in his teeth. 

Poor Constance hid her misery in Oceanus’s breast, 
holding the baby close up against her so that no one 
could see her face. Little Damaris, pale and quiet, 
too frightened to move or fully to breathe, clutched 
Constance’s arm, not understanding what was going 
forward, but knowing that whatever it was it dis- 
tressed everyone that constituted her little world, 
and suffering under this knowledge. 

“My friends,” Elder Brewster resumed his office, 
“you have heard what Mistress Hopkins hath 
spoken. It is not for us to deny pardon to her. She 


A PILGRIM MAID 


298 

hath done all, and more than was required of her, in 
publicly confessing her wrong. Let us take her by 
the hand, and let us pray that she may live long to 
shed peace and joy upon the young people whom 
she hath wronged, and might have wronged further, 
had not repentance, found her/’ 

One by one these severely stern people of Ply- 
mouth arose and, passing before Mistress Hopkins, 
took her hand, and said: 

“Sister, we rejoice with you.” Or some said: 
“Be of good consolation, and Heaven’s blessing be 
upon you.” A few merely shook her hand and 
passed on. 

Before many had thus filed past, Myles Standish 
leaped to his feet and cried: “Stephen, Stephen 
Hopkins, come! There’s a wild cat somewhere!” 

Stephen Hopkins went out after him, thankful to 
escape. 

“Poor old comrade,” said Captain Standish, 
putting his hand on the other’s shoulder. “If only 
good and sincere people would consider what these 
scenes, which relieve their nerves, cost others! 
There is a wild cat somewhere; I did not lie for thee, 
Stephen, but in good sooth I’ve no mortal idea where 
it may be!” 

He laughed, and Stephen Hopkins smiled. “You 
are a good comrade, Myles, and we are as like as two 
peas in a pod. Certes, we find this Plymouth pod 


A PILGRIM MAID 


299 


tight quarters, do we not, at least at times? I’ve no 
liking for airing private grievances in public: to my 
mind they belong between us and the Lord! — but 
plainly my wife sees this as the right way. What 
think you, Myles? Is it going to be better hence- 
forward ?” he said. 

“No doubt of that, no doubt whatever,” asserted 
Myles, positively. “And my pet Con is the chief 
instrument of Dame Eliza’s change of heart! Well, 
to speak openly, Stephen, I did not give thy wife 
credit for so much sense! Constance is sweet, and 
fair, and winsome enough to bring any one to her — 
his! — senses. Or drive him out of them! Better 
times are in store for thee, Stephen, old friend, and I 
am heartily thankful for it. So, now; take your 
family home, and do not mind the talk of Plymouth. 
For a few days they will discuss thee, thy wife, thy 
son, and thy daughter, but it will not be without 
praise for thee, and it will be a strange thing if Giles 
and I cannot stir up another event that will turn 
their attention from thee before thy patience quite 
gives out.” 

Myles Standish laughed, and clapped his hand on 
his friend’s shoulder by way of encouragement to him 
to face what any man, and especially a man of his sort, 
must dread to face — the comments and talk of his 
small world. 

The Hopkins family went home in silence, Stephen 


300 


A PILGRIM MAID 


Hopkins gently leading his wife by her arm, for she 
was exhausted by the strain of her emotions. 

Giles and Constance, walking behind them with 
the children, were thinking hard, going back in their 
minds to their early childhood, to the beautiful old 
mansion which both remembered dimly, to the 
Warwickshire cousins, to their embittered days since 
their stepmother had reigned over them, and now 
this marvellous change in her, this strange acknow- 
ledgment from her before everyone — their every- 
one — of wrong done, and greater wrong attempted 
and abandoned. They both shrank from the days 
to come, feeling that they could not treat their step- 
mother as they had done, yet still less could they 
come nearer to her, as would be their duty after this, 
without embarrassment. Giles went at once to his 
room to postpone the evil hour, but Constance could 
not escape it. 

She unfastened Damaris’s cloak, trying to chatter 
to the child in her old way, and she glanced up at her 
stepmother, as she knelt before Damaris, to invite 
her to share their smiles. Dame Eliza was watching 
her with longing that was almost fear. “ Con- 
stance, ” she said in a low voice. “Constance ?” 

She paused, extending her hands. 

Constance sprang up, forgetful of embarrassment, 
forgetful of old wrongs, remembering only to pity 
and to forgive, like the sweet girl that she was. 


A PILGRIM MAID 


301 

“Ah, Mother, never mind! Love me now, and 
never mind that once you did not! ,, she cried. 

Dame Eliza leaned to her and kissed her cheek. 

“Dear lass,” she murmured, “how could I grudge 
thee thy father’s love, since needs must one love thee 
who knows thee?” 


CHAPTER XX 


The Third Summer’s Garnered Yield 

S IDE by side now, through the weary days of an- 
other year, Constance Hopkins and her step- 
mother bore and vanquished the cruel difficulties 
which those days brought. 

Dame Eliza had been sincere in her contrition as 
was proved by the one test of sincerity — her actions 
bore out her words. 

Toward Giles she held herself kindly, yet never 
showed him affection. But toward Constance her 
manner was what might be called eagerly affection- 
ate, as if she so longed to prove her love for the girl 
that the limitations of speech and opportunity left 
her unsatisfied of expression. 

Hunger was the portion of everyone in Plymouth; 
conditions had grown harder with longer abiding 
there, except in the one — though that was important 
— matter of the frightful epidemic of the first winter. 

In spite of want Constance grew lovelier as she 
grew older. She was now a full-grown woman, tall 
with the slenderness of early youth. Her scant 
rations did not give her the gaunt look that most of 


302 


A PILGRIM MAID 


303 

the pilgrims, even the young ones, wore as they went 
on working hard and eating little. Instead, it 
etherealized and spiritualized Constance's beauty. 
Under her wonderful eyes, with their far-off look of a 
dreamer warmed and corrected by the light in them of 
love and sacrifice, were shadows that increased their 
brilliance. The pallor that had replaced the wild-rose 
colour in her cheeks did not lessen the exquisite fair- 
ness of her skin, and it set in sharp contrast to it the 
redness of her lips and emphasized their sweetness. 

Dame Eliza watched her with a sort of awe, and 
Damaris was growing old enough to offer to her 
sister's beauty the admiration that was apart from 
her adoring love for that sister. 

“Conniewouldset London afire, Stephen Hopkins,'’ 
said Dame Eliza to her husband one day. “Why 
not send her over to her cousins in Warwickshire, to 
your first wife's noble kindred, and let her come into 
her own? It seems a sinful thing to keep her here to 
fade and wane where no eye can see her." 

“This from you, Eliza!" cried Stephen Hopkins, 
honestly surprised, but feigning to be shocked. “Nay 
but you and I have changed roles! Never was I the 
Puritan you are, yet have I seen enough of the world 
to know that it hath little to offer my girl by way of 
peace and happiness, though it kneel before her offer- 
ing her adulation on its salvers. Constance is safer 
here, and Plymouth needs her; she can give here, 


A PILGRIM MAID 


3°4 

which is in very truth better than receiving; especially 
to receive the heartaches that the great world would 
be like to give one so lovely to attract its eye, so sensi- 
tive to its disillusionments. And as to wasted, wife, 
Con gives me joy, and you, too, and I think there is 
not one among us who does not drink in her loveli- 
ness like food, where actual food is short. Captain 
Myles and our doctor would be going lame and halt, 
and would feel blind, I make no doubt, did they not 
meet Constance Hopkins on their ways, like a flower 
of eglantine, fair and sweet, and for that matter look 
how she helps the doctor in his ministrations! Nay, 
nay, wife; we will keep our Plymouth maid, and I am 
certain there will come to her from across seas one 
day the romance and happiness that should be hers.” 

“Ah, well; life is short and it fades us sore. What 
does it matter where it passes ? I was a buxom lass 
myself, as you may remember, and look at me now! 
Not that I was the rare creature that your girl is,” 
sighed Dame Eliza. “Is it true that Mr. Weston 
is coming hither?” 

“True that he is coming hither,” assented her 
husband, “ and to our house. He hath made us many 
promises, but kept none. He hath come over with 
fishermen, in disguise, hath been cast away and lost 
everything at the hands of savages. He is taking 
refuge with us and we shall outfit him and deal with 
him as a brother. I do not believe his protestations 


A PILGRIM MAID 


305 

of good-will and the service he will do us in return, 
when he gets back to England. Yet we must deal 
generously, little as we have to spare, with a man in 
distress such as his.” 

“ Giles is coming now, adown the way with a 
stranger; is this Mr. Weston?” asked Dame Eliza. 

“I'll go out to greet and bring him in. Yes; this 
is the man,” said Mr. Hopkins, going forth to wel- 
come a man, whom in his heart he could not but dread. 
The guest stayed with the Hopkins family for a 
few days, till the colony should be won over to give 
him beaver skins, under his promise to repay them 
with generous interest, when he should have traded 
them, and was once more in England to send to Ply- 
mouth something of its requirements. 

On the final day of his stay Mr. Weston arose from 
the best seat in the inglenook, which had been yielded 
to him as his right, and strolled toward the door. 

“Come with me, my lad,” he said to Giles. “I 
have somewhat to say to thee.” 

“Why not say it here?” asked Giles, surlily, though 
he followed slowly after their guest. 

“Giles Hopkins, you like me not,” said Weston, 
when they had passed out of earshot. “Why is it? 
Surely I not only use you well, but you are the one 
person in this plantation that hath all the qualities I 
like best in a man: brains, courage, youth, good birth, 
which makes for spirit, and good looks. Your sister 


3 o 6 A PILGRIM MAID 

is all this and more, yet is the ‘more’ because she 
is a maid, and that excludes her from my preference 
for my purposes. Giles Hopkins, are you the man 
I take you for?” 

“ Faith, sir, that I cannot tell till you have shown 
me what form that taking bears, said Giles. 

“There you show yourself! Prudence added to my 
list of qualities!” applauded Weston, clapping Giles 
on the back with real, or pretended enthusiasm. 
“I take you for a man with resolution, courage 
to seize an opportunity to make your fortune, to 
put yourself among those men of consequence who 
are secure of place, and means to adorn it. Will 
you march with me upon the way I will open to you ? ” 

“‘I dare do all that may become a man; who dares 
do more is none/” replied Giles. “I don’t know 
where I learned that, but it sounds like one of my 
father’s beloved phrases, from his favourite poet. It 
seems well to fit the case.” 

“Shakespeare is not a Puritan text book,” ob- 
served Weston, dryly. “No Hopkins is ever fully 
atune with such a community as this. Therefore, 
Giles, will you welcome my offer, as a more canting 
Plymouth pilgrim might not. Not to waste more 
time: Will you collect, after I have gone, all the 
skins which you can obtain from these settlers ? And 
will you hold them in a safe place together, assuring 
your neighbours that you are secured of a market for 


A PILGRIM MAID 


307 

them at better prices than they have ever received ? 
And will you then, after you have got together all 
the skins available, ship them to me by means which 
I will open to you as soon as I am sure of your cooper- 
ation? This will leave your Plymouth people strip- 
ped to the winds; their commodity of trade gone, and, 
scant of food as they are, they will come to heel like 
dogs behind him who will lead them to meat. This 
will be yourself. I will furnish you with the means 
to give them what they will require in order to be 
bound to you. You shall be a prince of the New 
World, holding your little kingdom under the great 
English throne; there shall be no end to your possible 
grandeur. I will send you men, commodities for 
trade, arms, fine cloth and raiment to fulfil the 
brightest fairy dreams of youth. And look you, 
Giles Hopkins, this is no idle boast; it is within my 
power to do exactly as I promise. Are you mine? ,, 

“ Yours \” Giles spoke with difficulty, the blood 
mounting to his temples and knotting its veins, his 
hands clenching and unclenching as if it was almost 
beyond him to hold them from throttling his father’s 
guest. “Am I a man or a cur? Cur? Nay, no cur 
is so low as you would make me. Betray Plymouth ? 
Turn on these people with whom Eve suffered and 
wrought? I would give my hand to kick you out 
into yonder harbour and drown you there as you 
deserve. I have but to turn you over to our gover- 


A PILGRIM MAID 


308 

nor, and short ways will you get with the good beaver 
skins which have been given to you by these people 
you want me to trick, scant though they are of every- 
thing, and that owing to you who have never sent 
them anything but your lying promises. Nay, turn 
not so white! You may keep your courage, as you 
keep your worthless life. Neither will I betray you 
to them. But see to it that this last day of your stay 
here is indeed the last one! Only till sunset do I 
give you to get out of Plymouth. If you are within 
our boundaries at moonrise I will deliver you over, 
and urge your hanging. And be sure these starved 
immigrants will be in a mood to hang you higher than 
Haman, when they hear of what you have laid before 
me, against them who are in such straits.” 

Mr. Weston did not delay to test Giles’s sincerity. 
There was no mistaking that he would do precisely as 
he promised, and Weston took his departure a good 
two hours before sundown. 

Giles stood with his hands in his pockets beside 
his father as Weston departed. 

“Giles, courtesy to a guest is a law that binds us 
all,” suggested Stephen Hopkins. 

“Mercy, rather,” said Giles, tersely. He nodded 
to Mr. Weston without removing his hands. “A 
last salute, Mr. Weston,” he said. “I expect never 
to meet you again, neither in this, nor any other 
world.” 


A PILGRIM MAID 


309 


“Giles !” cried Constance, shocked. 

“Son, what do you know of this man that you 
dare insult him in departing ?” said Mr. Hopkins. 

“That never will Plymouth receive one penny of 
value for the beaver skins he hath taken, nor grati- 
tude for the kindness shown him when he was 
destitute,” said Giles, turning on his heel shortly and 
leaving his father to look after Weston, troubled by 
this confirmation of the doubt that he had always 
felt of this false friend of Plymouth colony. 

The effect upon Giles of having put far from him 
temptation and stood fast by his fellow-colonists, 
though no one but himself knew of it, was to arouse 
in him greater zeal for the welfare of Plymouth than 
he had felt before, and greater effort to promote it. 

Plymouth had been working upon the community 
plan; all its population labouring together, sharing 
together the results of that labour, like one large 
family. And, though the plan was based upon the 
ideal of brotherhood, yet it worked badly; food was 
short, and the men not equal in honest effort, nor 
willing to see their womankind tilling the soil and 
bearing heavy burdens for others than their own 
families. So while some bore their share of the work, 
and more, others lay back and shirked. There must 
be a remedy found, and that at once, to secure the 
necessary harvest in the second year, and third 
summer of the life of the plantation. 


A PILGRIM MAID 


3 xo 

Giles Hopkins went swinging down the road after 
he had seen the last of Mr. Weston. He was bound 
for the governor’s house, but he came up with 
William Bradford on the way and laid before him his 
thoughts. 

“Mr. Bradford,” he said, “I’ve been considering. 
We shall starve to death, even though we get the 
ship that is promised us from home, bringing us all 
that for which we hope, unless we can raise better 
crops. I am one of the youngest men, but may I lay 
before you my suggestion?” 

“Surely, my son,” said Governor Bradford. “Old 
age does not necessarily include wisdom, nor youth 
folly. What do you advise?” 

“Give every family its allotment of land and seed,” 
said Giles. “Let each family go to work to raise 
what it shall need for itself, and abide by the result of 
its own industry, or indolence, always supposing 
that no misfortune excuses failure. I’ll warrant we 
shall see new days — or new sacks filled, which is 
more to the point — than when we let the worthless 
profit by worth, or worth be discouraged by the 
leeches upon it.” 

Governor Bradford regarded Giles smilingly. 
“Thou art an emphatic lad, Giles, but I like earnest- 
ness and strong convictions. Never yet was there 
any one who did not believe in his own panacea for 
whatever evil had set him to discovering it! It was 


A PILGRIM MAID 


3ii 

Plato's conceit, and other ancients with him, that 
bringing into the community of a commonwealth all 
property, making it shared in common, was to make 
mankind happy and prosperous. But I am of your 
opinion that it has been found to breed much con- 
fusion and discontent, and that it is against the 
ordinance of God, who made it a law that a man 
should labour for his own nearest of kin, and trans- 
mit to them the fruit of his labours. So will I act 
upon your suggestion, which I had already considered, 
having seen how wrong was Plato's utopian plan, or 
at least how ill it was working here. With the ap- 
proval of our councillors, I will distribute land, seed, 
and all else required, and establish individual pro- 
duction instead of our commonality." 

“It is time we tried a new method, Governor 
Bradford," said Giles. “Another year like these 
we've survived, and there would be no survival of 
them. I don't remember how it felt to have enough 
to eat!" 

“Poor lad," said the governor, kindly, though to 
the full he had shared the scarcity. “It is hard to 
be young and hungry, for at best youth is rarely 
satisfied, and it must be cruel to see every day at the 
worst! But I have good ground to hope that our 
winter is over and past, and that the voice of the 
turtle will soon be heard in our land. In other 
words, I think that a ship, or possibly more than one. 


A PILGRIM MAID 


312 

will be here this summer, bringing us new courage in 
new helpers, and supplies in plenty. ,, 

“It is to be hoped,” said Giles, and went away. 

The new plan was adopted, and it infused new 
enthusiasm into the Plymouth people. Constance 
insisted upon having for her own one section of her 
father’s garden. Indeed all the women of the 
colony went to work in the fields now, quite willingly, 
and without opposition from their men, since their 
work was for themselves. 

“It was wholly different from having their women 
slaving for strong men who were no kin to them, as 
they had done when the community plan prevailed,” 
said the men of Plymouth. And so the women of 
Plymouth went to work willingly, even gaily. 

There was great hope of a large crop, early in May, 
when all the land was planted, and little green heads 
were everywhere popping up to announce the grain 
to come. Constance had planted nothing but peas; 
she said that she loved them because they climbed so 
bravely, and put out their plucky tendrils to help 
themselves up. Her peas were the pride of her 
heart, and all Plymouth was admiring them, when 
the long drouth set in. 

From the third week in May till the middle of 
July not a drop of rain fell upon the afflicted fields of 
Plymouth. The corn had been planted with fish, 
which for a time insured it moisture and helped it, 


A PILGRIM MAID 


3i3 

but gradually the promising green growth drooped, 
wilted, browned, and on the drier plain, burned and 
died under the unshadowed sun. 

Constance saw her peas drying up, helpless to save 
them. She fell into the habit of sitting drooping 
like the grain, on the doorstep of the Leyden Street 
house, her bonnet pushed back, her chin in her hands, 
sorrowfully sharing the affliction of the soil. 

Elder Brewster, passing, found her thus, and 
stopped. 

“Not blithe Constantia like this?” he said. 

“Ah, yes, Mr. Brewster,” said Constance, rising, 
“just like this. The drouth has parched my heart 
and dried up my courage. For nine weeks no rain, 
and our life hanging upon it! Oh, Elder Brewster, 
call for a day of fasting and prayer that we may be 
pitied by the Lord with the downfall of his merciful 
rain ! Without it, without His intervention, starva- 
tion will be ours. But it needs not me to tell you 
this!” 

“My daughter, I will do as you say; indeed is it 
time, and I have been thinking so,” replied the elder. 
“The day after to-morrow shall be set aside to im- 
plore Heaven’s mercy on our brave plantation, which 
has borne and can offer the sacrifice of a long- 
suffering patience to supplement its prayers.” 

The day of fast and prayer arose with the same 
metallic sky that had cloudlessly stretched over 


A PILGRIM MAID 


3H 

Plymouth for two months. Not a sign of mercy, nor 
of relenting was anywhere above them as the people 
of Plymouth, the less devout subdued to the same 
fearless eagerness to implore for mercy that the more 
devout ones felt, went silently along the dusty roads, 
heads bent beneath the scorching sun, without hav- 
ing tasted food, assembling in their meeting house 
to pray. 

In the rear of the bare little building stood the 
Indians who lived among the Englishmen, Squanto 
at their head, with folded arms watching and wonder- 
ing what results should follow this appeal to the God 
of the white men, now to be tested for the first time 
in a great public way as to whether He was faithful 
to His promise, as these men said, and powerful 
to fulfil. 

All day long the prayer continued, with the coming 
and going of the people, taking turns to perform the 
necessary tasks of the small farms, and to continue 
in supplication. 

There had been no hotter day of all those so long 
trying these poor people, and no cloud appeared as 
the sun mounted and reached his height, then began 
to descend. Damaris took Constance’s hand as they 
walked homeward, then dropped it. 

“It is too hot; it burns me,” she said, fretfully. 

Constance raised her head and pushed back her 
hair with the backs of her burning hands. She 


A PILGRIM MAID 


3i5 

folded her lips and snuffed the air, much as a fine 
dog stands to scent the birds. Constance was 
as sensitive to atmospheric conditions as a barom- 
eter. 

“Damaris, Damaris, rain!” she cried. 

And the “ little cloud, no bigger than a man’s 
hand,” was rising on the horizon. 

Before bedtime the sky was overcast, and the 
blessed, the prayed-for rain began to fall. Without 
wind or lightning, quietly it fell, as if the angels of 
God were sent to open the phials of the delicious wet- 
ness and pour it steadily upon Plymouth. As the 
night went on the rain increased, one of the soft, 
steady, soaking rains that penetrate to the depths of 
the sun-baked earth, find the withered rootlets, and 
heal and revivify. 

Plymouth wakened to an earth refreshed and mois- 
tened by a downpour so steady, so generous, so calm 
that no rain could have seemed more like a direct 
visitation of Heaven’s mercy than this, which the 
reverent and awe-stricken colony, even to the doubt- 
ing Indians, so received. For by it Plymouth was 
saved. 

It was two weeks later that Doctor Fuller came 
hastily to Stephen Hopkins’s door. 

“ Friends,” he said, with trembling voice, “the 
Anne is coming up! Mistress Fuller and my child 
are aboard, as we have so often reminded one an- 


A PILGRIM MAID 


3 j 6 

other. Constance, you promised to go with me to 
welcome this fateful ship/’ 

‘‘Have I time to make a little, a very small toilette, 
doctor mine?” cried Constance, excitedly. “I want 
to look my prettiest to greet Mistress Fuller, and to 
tell her what I — what we all owe to you.” 

“You have a full half hour, yet it is a pleasure to 
watch the ship approach. Hasten, then, vain little 
Eve of this desolate First Abiding Place!” the doctor 
gave her permission. 

Constance ran away and began to dress with her 
heart beating fast. 

“I wonder why the Anne means so much to me, 
as if she were the greatest event of all my days here?” 
she thought. 

Her simple white gown slipped over her head and 
into place and out of its thin, soft folds her little 
throat rose like a calla, and her face, all flushed, like 
a wild rose. 

She pinned a lace neckerchief over her breast, and 
laid its ruffles into place with fluttering fingers, catch- 
ing it with a delicate hoop of pearls that had been 
her mother’s. For once she decided against her 
Puritan cap, binding her radiant hair with fillets of 
narrow blue velvet ribbon, around and over which its 
little tendrils rose, wilful and resisting its shackles. 

On her hands she drew long mitts of white lace, 
and she slipped her feet into white shoes, which had 


A PILGRIM MAID 


3i7 

also once been worn by her mother in far-away days 
when she danced the May dances in Warwickshire. 

Constance’s glass was too small, too high-hung, to 
give her the effect of her complete figure, but it 
showed her the face that scanned it, and what it 
showed her flushed that lovely face with innocent 
joy in its loveliness, and completed its perfection. 

She got the full effect of her appearance in the eyes 
of the four men in the colony whom, till this day, she 
had loved best, her father, Giles, Doctor Fuller, and 
Myles Standish, as she came down the winding stair- 
way to them. 

They all uttered an involuntary exclamation, and 
took a step toward her. 

Her father took her hand and tucked it into his 
own. 

“You are attired like a bride, my wild rose,” he 
said. “Who are you going to meet?” 

“Who knows!” cried Constance, gaily, with un- 
conscious prophecy. “Mistress Fuller, but who can 
say whom else beside?” 

The Anne came up with wide-spread canvas, free 
of the gentle easterly breeze. Her coming marked 
the end of the hardest days of Plymouth colony; she 
was bringing it much that it needed, some sixty 
colonists; the wives and children of many who had 
borne the brunt of the beginning and had come on the 
Mayflower ; new colonists, some among Plymouth’s 


A PILGRIM MAID 


3i8 

best, some too bad to be allowed to stay, and stores 
and articles of trade abundantly. 

As the coming of the Anne marked the close of 
Plymouth’s worst days, so it meant to many who 
were already there the dawn of a new existence. 

Doctor Fuller took into his arms his beloved wife 
and his child, with grateful tears running down his 
face. 

He turned to present Mistress Fuller to Constance, 
but found, instead, Captain Myles Standish watch- 
ing with a smile at once tender, melancholy, and glad 
another meeting. A young man, tall, browned, 
gallant, and fearless in bearing, with honest eyes and 
a kindly smile, had come off the Anne and had stood 
a moment looking around him. His eyes fell upon 
Constance Hopkins on her father’s arm, her lips 
parted, her eyes dilated, her cheeks flushed, a figure 
so exquisite that he fell back in thrilled wonder. 
Never again could he see another face, so completely 
were his eyes and heart filled by this first sight of 
Constance Hopkins, unconsciously waiting for him, 
her husband-to-be, upon the shore of the New World. 

Damariswasclingingtoher hand; Giles and her step- 
mother were watching her with loving pride; it was 
easy to see that all those who had come ashore from 
the Anne were admiring this slender blossom of Ply- 
mouth. 

But the young man went toward her, almost with- 


A PILGRIM MAID 


3i9 

out knowing that he did so, drawn to her irresistibly, 
and Constance looked toward him, and saw him for 
the first time, her pulses answering the look in his 
eyes. 

Myles Standish joined them; he had learned the 
young man’s name. 

“Welcome, Nicholas Snowe, to Plymouth,” he 
said. “We have borne much, but we have won our 
fight; we have founded our kingdom. Nicholas 
Snowe, this is a Plymouth maid, Constance Hop- 
kins.” 

“I am glad you are come,” said Constance; her 
voice was low and the hand that she extended 
trembled slightly. 

“I, too, am glad that you are here, Nicholas 
Snowe,” added Stephen Hopkins. “Yes, this is 
Constance Hopkins, a Plymouth maid, and my 
dearest lass.” 


THE END 



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GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 

























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